His silent mind
by Harold Saxon
Summary: The tenth Doctor, guided by what remains of the white point star, tries to find the Master who was imprisoned on a planet that was doomed by its creators. Set after the End of time, non-canon. COMPLETED
1. Chapter 1

A word of warning before you continue reading:

I wrote this story with the 10th Doctor still alive and well. He didn't need to sacrifice himself to save Wilf, because he wasn't there in the final scene to lock himself in the radiation-booth. Some poor, innocent, but highly dispensable white-coat got roasted by the 100 megatons of radiation, not the Doctor. The rest of the story follows the storyline that was set out in the end of time. The Master disappeared with the Timelords, seemingly lost with the others as Gallifrey fell in the final days of the Time war. Wilf is back home with his family, safe and sound, while the Doctor still wanders alone in the universe, trying to find the purpose of his existence.

Hope you enjoy the story, and please, do respond and review, and I promise to write as often as I can, and special thanks to Edzel2 for beta-ing!

**Tress-passers**

1.

The water was tranquil today. He could see it through the large windows that flooded the Doctor's room with daylight. The colour of the water reflected that of the sky, which was grey and white. Mist hung low over the surface. Together with the faint rays of the sun, it created a serene but ghostly scene, basking the tiny stretch of mainland coast at the horizon in a cold orange glow. Somewhere outside these fortified walls, a seagull called.

"You know, sometimes it is good not to remember anything."

The Doctor leaned over his desk. With his hands folded, he studied his patient's face that was gaunt and pale, devoid of any emotions. He kept staring out of the window at the light that hit the water and splintered in a thousand glittering shards on the waves. This place was so quiet, so very strange. He often tried to listen. He would keep himself very quiet, even stopping his breathing for moments at a time. But he couldn't hear anything. Not really. There was no noise in this place. Only tiny little sounds, insignificant hums that was inevitable to be suffered by the living, soothing his mind to sleep. Footsteps in the hall, the rattle of food trolleys at dinner time, the meaningless chatter of the orderlies and nurses, the call of the seabirds outside his barred window, and at night, the steady breathing of his room-mate lying in the bed next to him, dreaming his medication-induced, sterile white-washed dreams, and the scratching of tiny paws over the worn-out floor as rodents found their way out of the locked room and into the kitchen.

"Did you hear me?"

He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the dusty stale air in the chamber. His chest strained the leather straps secured at his back. The Doctor was always talking. He talked and talked and talked, but never listened. How he wished he could get out of the straight-jacket. Rip right through the coarse fabric and free his hands, closing them around the Doctor's thin neck to shut his dull prattling, just for a moment. Maybe then he could hear it.

The Doctor came over from his seat and crouched down in front of him. Now there was nowhere-else left to look.

"Harry, did you hear me?"

He blinked his eyes, for a short moment there was contact. The Doctor smiled.

"We don't need to rush things. We'll take one step at the time. I'll be there. I'll help."

Something stirred his memory. It came through the fog of pointless thoughts that seemed to pollute his mind every waking hour, pestering him with minute details of things that didn't really mattered, like the way the Doctor's eyebrows raised at the end of every sentence that he spoke in a most irritating way, or how his black-rimmed glasses reflected the light from the wax-polished surface of his dark mahogany desk. He saw his own face in the same reflection, and suddenly he remembered what was once said between them, many years ago.

"You promised." He turned his head, meeting eye to eye. "You said you were going to take me to see the stars." A grin slowly spread over his lips.

"I promised that I would help you." The Doctor spoke in a soft voice.

"Oh yes, the Doctor is always trying to make people better." The grin widened into a sarcastic smirk. "Helping poor deranged fools like me." His hooded eyes were suddenly awake and burning fiercely.

"Oh you would like that, wouldn't you? To get your screwdriver and stir inside my mind to fix what is broken. The good Doctor and his pitiful patient, the fixer and the fixer-upper!"

He threw his head back and laughed in the Doctor's face as the madness returned and shattered the calm surface. It was as easy as breaking through a thin layer of ice with an iron mace.

"I know you don't want my help. But it doesn't matter. We've got all the time in the world."

"Oh but that's not entirely true, is it?" He rolled his head over his shoulder, making it crack. The strain in his neck muscle had felt like a killing.

Although he didn't want to show his anxiety, he couldn't restrain from glancing at the clockwork that sat on the Doctor's desk. The short silver hand wandering over the clock-face came close to five. Almost five o'clock in the late afternoon. Soon the sun would be setting, and darkness would follow swiftly. He turned, his eyes back on the window. Outside, the lagoons that surrounded the small island was still batching in the afternoon glow, giving a false sense of security that the night was nowhere near. But he wasn't fooled. The orange disk was almost at the dark stretch of land in the west. Although he had seen it a million times, the scene still evoked a strong sense of dread.

The jacket was uncomfortable. Sweltering. Hot. He struggled with the restrains when his eyes caught the glimpse of something floating over the waves. It was a tiny boat cutting through the water, leaving a triangle shaped wound in its wake.

No boats came to the island. No one of sound mind dared to set foot on it.

"Someone is coming." His eyes widened. The Doctor followed his gaze and saw the small moving vessel, alone in the vast plain of water. It was heading towards the island. He watched but didn't respond.

"Doctor. Someone is coming!" He turned to look at him. He never listened. With him you had to repeat everything twice, slam it into his thick skull, shove his nose right into it.

The Doctor gazed back at him. Apprehension and unease were evident on his face. "There is nothing to be afraid of. You're safe here." He lied.

Stupid, thick, moronic Doctor. Filthy, deceitful, cheating liar. Then again, the Doctor didn't have to face the monsters that lurked in the shadows. Frightening things that crept into his cell after the lights in the hall went out, disgusting things, with cold and bony fingers with breaths that carried the stench of decay, of a hundred rotting corpses decomposing in the hot sun. It climbed in his bed as he lay sweating between the sheets. Helpless he was, as it scuttled over his body, moving up with an agonizing slowness, before it ripped his skull wide-open to crawl inside his head. Such frightful visions, such dreadful nightmares it brought that he would scream and scream to never ever stop again, if he only they would allow him to. If only the drugs they gave him didn't rob him from a voice. Instead, he was like a corpse during those long dark hours, paralyzed by the toxins that coursed through his veins, strapped to his bed, his eyes open but vacant, his breathing laboured but constant. Sterile. Stable. No noise ever came from him. How could there be?

Perhaps the Doctor wasn't really a liar, only an ignorant bastard.

"You should return to your room."

"No!" He wriggled and squirmed, trying to get out, but only setting the restrains tighter till the leather cut right through the fabric into his skin. His hearts rattled inside his chest like a frightened bird in a cage. His eyes went back to the clock. "It's not time. Not yet!"

"You need to rest." The Doctor said worriedly, he moved back behind his desk and pushed the red button hidden underneath the tabletop. A buzzer went off. "We'll start again. Tomorrow."

"No! No! I'll be good. Promise. I'm calm now. Look at me! I'm totally zen." He stared at the Doctor with a big fat grin on his reddened face, but it was hardly convincing, even he realized that.

Two orderlies came into the room rolling a wheelchair. Lose straps of leather lay over the arms and dangled from the seat, waiting for him. He wet his lips and turned back to the Doctor.

"Let me stay in here with you. They don't come when I'm with you." He knew he was pleading now. He hated himself for it, but he would have crawled on his hands and knees to beg him not to let these men take him away again. But the dim, stupid, pig-headed Doctor didn't listen. He never did.

"Take him back." The Doctor said. Just like that. Three words, making up a sentence that meant very little to the Doctor himself, but meant everything for him. It marked the end of safety and comfort, of light and some degree of sanity, and the beginning of yet another nightmare, of darkness and perpetual madness.

As they dragged him into the wheelchair, strapped him down and pushed him out of the good Doctor's sight, before they came with the needle filled with poison, he screamed. He screamed his lungs out as long as he could, because he knew it had to last him the entire night.

When he was left alone in his office, the Doctor sat down in his chair, and cracked his neck. His shoulders were sore. His eyes gazed out of the window, and followed the tiny speck in the distance, and watched how it slowly grew larger as it approached. Harry was right. There were people coming. Humans. They were close enough for him to sense them, and in his mind he counted. There were three of them. Two men, and one woman, and they were still so very young. He sighed, his face strained by a sense of helplessness. The human race, he pondered, always so inquisitive, searching the unknown, looking for an answer for the how and the why of their own existence. You had to admire them for that. But seriously, why do these people never read the warning signs? He didn't put them up just for the bloody fun of it! You would think that a seven hundred miles thick asteroid belt, two red giants and a gigantic black hole would hold them back, but no! They come strolling right in as if trespassing was their kind's favourite pass-time! And now would he be forced to start rushing things. Set things in motion that he wouldn't dare to do otherwise, because he knew Harry wasn't ready for it. Not yet. He dreaded it. It went fully against his cautious instinct.

He had to though. He had no other choice if he wanted to prevent it from happening again. These people would bring out the worst of this place, out of him, just like they did last time.

Raking through his hair, he took the phone that sat on the desk and dialled a number. The line went over and a computer voice answered the call.

"Drive locked." It reported.

"Unlock C drive." The Doctor said. "Password - the Medusa Cascade."

"C drive unlocked."

"Assign data disk to C drive, mount program 110012 in path C slash section 5 slash 001."

"Program 110012 mounted."

The Doctor hesitated for a moment. He gazed at the sun, disappearing fast behind the horizon. Somewhere down in the long corridor, his patient finally stopped screaming.

"Run program 110012." He ordered, hoping fiercely that this time, it would finally work.

2.

"And I'm telling you again. We are lost." Aurelia said with a certain snide in her voice. Why do the others never listen to her? Even if she was the youngest of the crew they shouldn't ignore her. It was downright rude. "We've passed that red giant for the third time already. The planet-nav is bust."

"It's not bust. It can't be bust." Irritated, Neil glanced over his shoulder at her, but kept his hands on the steering wheel. When you were cruising through space at light speed, you better be. The ship wasn't his, off course. He could hardly afford a second-hand rusty mud-glider, let alone an expensive intergalactic cruiser. Silver winged and sleek, gliding past the planets with ballet-like grace and handling like a mechanical engineer's wet dream, he must admit that he guy he nicked it from had immaculate good taste. He pointed at a red dot in the blue holographic screen projected on the front window. "It says here that we're still on course."

"It also says that we have 15 hours and 33 seconds left before we arrive at our destination."

"And?"

" It already said that three hours ago!"

"Can you two stop yelling at each other?" William climbed over the back and jumped back into the front seat. He carried a 42nd century version of a cradle reader. "I could hear you all the way in the lavatory. Brighten up boys and girls, this was supposed to be a laugh."

"Bloody fun we're having with miss nag here." Neil complained. "I swear Will, next time it's you and me alone mate. Two guys, no chicks."

"The correct term to use is women." Aurelia responded, irritated. "Or perhaps a tad more difficult for you, ladies. I don't exactly like to be referred to as poultry."

"Hey, I didn't snooze through my classes of 21st century English slang for nothing. Indulge me."

"You pretentious twat."

"Oh cut the guy some slack." Will shot a smile at her as a peace offering between the two. "If it wasn't his obsession for the weird and obscure we wouldn't be here in the first place." He activated the reader and a digitalized version of a book-page appeared. The title page read: Poveglia the planet of horrors.

"Bit old-fashioned a holovid. Couldn't you get the brain-download?" Aurelia remarked.

"It's what you get by scanning the odd corners of the library. You should see the rows of paper prints that they keep on continent 5. Homer and Dickens in primitive ink on paper, absolutely marvellous." To Aurelia's annoyance, there was an actual dreamy look in Neil's eyes when he said that. "Works of art they are, you could even smell the breath of the people who have once read pages!"

Aurelia pulled a face. Meanwhile, Will was going through the pages. Words flashed by like someone was flicking the pages of a real book.

"Stop that. You're making me dizzy."

"I was looking for a specific chapter. There was this bit in the history section that was really interesting."

"Use the search function." Aurelia rolled her eyes. "Anyway, we know where we are heading." She took in a deep breath and continued in a bored voice. "Poveglia, the doomed isolation colony of the Adratic constellation. In the 40th century, all the human settlements in the nearby solar systems sent their people dying of the Medusian plaque there. Later it was converted to a psychiatric prison for the criminally insane, which was operational for about a century or so before it was hit by an asteroid in the 42nd century and was completely destroyed. We know the background of that place. Neil, the "professor" over there told us already. It's how he got us involved in this seemingly endless crazy trip."

"Man, everything sounds dull coming from you." Neil laughed. "You left out all the best bits."

"Right, the "hell on earth" and "you can still hear the screams of the dying" bits. I leave that to you. You were always better at the fictional stuff, hence the heavy reliance on wishful thinking in everyone of your disastrous schemes."

"Found it." Will said. Luckily he had learned to block out Aurelia's ranting over the years, you would just turn mad otherwise. He slowed down the flow and scrolled to the part he was searching for. "It says here, that legend says that Pevolga was not hit by an asteroid, but was purposely destroyed. The locals spoke of God-like beings, appearing in a magnificent white light, reaching out from their world into ours." He looked up at the others enthusiastically. "As a punishment for those who they had condemned to that place, they smite the planet with bolts of thunder, setting fire to the entire surface till the ground turned to black ash and the sky itself burnt red. Man this is really good stuff."

"Local folklore, you gotta love it." Neil said.

"Suits them for living in the backwater of the universe." Aurelia commented. "Why are you reading this?"

"I have always liked fiction." Will grinned. "Especially when it's fantasy. It's my cup of tea. Besides -" He looked at the counter on the planet-nav. "It helps to kill the time. We still got like 15 hours and 33 minutes to go."

Neil shot a glance at the timer, and groaned.

"There goes the red giant." Aurelia said as she stared out of the window at her right. "Again."

"Maybe we are a bit lost." Neil finally admitted, but not without pain in his heart.

"Yeah, maybe." Aurelia could not help herself from smirking. "Maybe we are quickly running out on energy as well."

Neil looked down on his dashboard. The streak of green lights that indicated the power supply had sunk well below the red line, and was pointing at critical.

"Turn the next moon right, we should pass a fuel station, I'm sure about it. We must have passed by like what? At least four times now." She was still smirking.

Neil took a deep breath and sighed before turning the wheel and steering the silver winged cruiser out of intergalactic highway 47 towards the nearby solar system.

3.

The Doctor always thought that fuel stations were sad places to visit. You've got all these lonely travellers with long, tired faces waiting in line at the till, the place was flooded in awful artificial light that made every healthy person look terminally ill, and they sold absolutely horrible food. He found them especially sad when they were remote from the larger towns and cities, or in this case, so far away from the first inhabited planet nearby that it would take three days cruising at light-speed to reach. That was if you were only travelling on a spaceship typical of the 46th century of course. The Doctor was far better off with the Tardis.

He had parked it at the back of the main building in one of the garages. It was already well out of sight, but he locked and put it out of sync with time just for a second. He was going to leave it here for quite some while. Better to be safe than sorry.

He didn't exactly know why he was here, standing alone in this run-down place on this tiny rock at the far end of the galaxy, which had little more to offer than two rusty fuel pumps covered by a half-collapsing roof. It didn't even have a proper shop. He liked shops. It was the only thing that made a place like this somewhat sufferable.

Still, he was left with some sort of guidance. His hand slipped in his pocket and took out the tiny object. He held it in his palm, careful not to drop it. It was a shard of pure diamond, the only thing left to him from his home planet, now lost and forever gone. A white point star.

"Alright. I'm here. Show me where to go now." He wrapped his fingers around it and shut his eyes. Even so supposedly close to the source, the signal was weak and very difficult to pick up. There was so much noise coming from all around him, satellites screeching, planets rumbling, and stars burning that it was extremely hard to concentrate. How the Master had managed to hear that sound over vast distances of space and even across time itself, was a completely mystery to him.

"I should really ask him." He mumbled to himself. "When I find him. Or if."

If indeed. He shook his head. He must listen carefully, concentrate on the signal alone, block out the rest, even the sound of his own heartbeats. There! There it was. The drums. The rhythm of four. The very sound that had driven the Master insane and had nearly cost the Doctor his life. Once loud and threatening like thunder, it was now softer than a frightened child's whisper, nothing but a faint echo of what it once was. However, it still came from the man who was once possessed by it, and it had led the Doctor straight to him like a beacon shining in the night.

The sound came from the other side of this solar system, far away, behind the red giant that filled up half of the entire sky. The Doctor shook his head.

"No, no. I know that already. How do I get there? I can't get near with the Tardis. It's locked for Timelord technology. Come on. Show me."

The drums moved away from the source, turning to the left, and the Doctor followed it. He traced it back all the way to the front of the gas station till it faded away in the background noise. The Doctor tried to concentrate, but it was of no use. The signal was lost again. Frustrated, he uttered a scream and kicked an empty soda can. With the limited gravity field on this tiny planet, it was catapulted right out into space. The Doctor stared after it till it vanished into the dark.

"Blimey, it should be fantastic to kick a ball around here." He muttered.

He sat down on the cracked pavement. Although he could try again to relocate the signal, it was hard to pick up his hearts from down the tip of his shoes. He had been following this trail for so long now. Ever since the events of that catastrophic Christmas back on earth, from the moment that the Master vanished with the Timelords into the Time Lock back to the final days of the time war, he had been searching.

It wasn't a matter of silencing his guilt, or even repaying the Master for his unusual act of sacrifice.

The real reason was because he felt utterly alone. The years had worn him out like an old shoe. His wonderful companions had faded from his side, living their lives without him. He was either forgotten or remembered, but in the end, they all left. And as for the Timelords…well, did he need to open those wounds again?

With a heavy heart, he gazed at what was left of the white point star. The six faces of the shard reflected the sterile light and shattered it like stardust.

Suddenly, the Doctor heard a noise that sent him straight up. It was a rattle, a tapping, a rhythm of four beats. He perked his ears and listened. A silver winged cruiser slipped into the station. A pipe was loose from the exhaust system, and the whole thing made a noise like an old barrel running on Chinese firecrackers. The Doctor stared at it in amazement, then mouthed a silent thank you to the diamond before slipped it back safely inside his pocket. He ran to the two men stepping out of the vessel. His face was burning hot with joy.

"Ello there. Need a hand?" He nodded his head to the back of the cruiser.

"Um, no. We're fine. Just want to fill up on the power supply." Neil answered.

"Sorry, are you the mechanic here?" Will asked. "Could you take a look at the exhaust pipes? They are making an awful racket."

Neil grabbed his mate by the arm, urging him to shut it. "I said that we are fine."

"I'm not the mechanic. I am the Doctor." He beamed a smile at Will and shook his hand.

"William Banner." Will replied and smiled, it was difficult not to be taken by the Doctor's friendliness.

"William Banner." The Doctor repeated. "Nice to meet you. Ello!" He shot a smile at Neil. "And you are?"

"What? No. I'm sorry but we are very busy." Neil backed away and put his hands in his pockets before the Doctor could grab hold of them. "We don't have time for a chat."

"His name is Neil, Neil Armstrong." Will said. His friend rolled his eyes at him.

"Great, why don't you give him my credit number as well." He snorted.

"Oh! Neil Armstrong! Like the astronaut? That's a great name!"

Aurelia stuck her head out of the cabin door. "What's going on here?" She asked, gazing at the tall stranger in the long coat in surprise.

"No, it's not like the astronaut, but like the astronomist, the one who discovered the existence stable black holes." He couldn't help himself from correcting him, but the Doctor was already strolling past and went straight for cabin. "Ello! My name is the Doctor." He shook Aurelia's hand.

"Aurelia Northernlight. Hey, you can't just come in here!"

Ignoring her, the Doctor walked up to the cockpit where the planet-nav was still running.

"Look at that! Everything is brand new in here. You got dual automated pilot operators, asteroid warning systems, radiation shields, and a second-generation invisibility cloak! You even got heated seats!" The Doctor popped into the driver's seat and nudged his head in the soft padding. "Oh that feels like a sunbeam in early spring. Only it's shining on your bum instead of your face. Anyway, real cutting edge technology, must be a pain to pay off."

"It's a rental." Neil uttered, he was sweating beneath his T-shirt. "Sir, I insist you get out of our ship. We don't know you and…"

"But I just introduced myself! I am the Doctor." He waved at him.

"Yes, I know, but I don't want you on my ship." Neil said firmly, his head was turning red.

"Oh but you do." The Doctor took out his laserscrewdriver. "I see you're heading for the forbidden zone in the Adratic constellation. You're looking for a planet called Pevolga."

Neil's mouth dropped open. "How did you know that?"

The Doctor pointed with the tip of his screwdriver at the planet-nav.

"Yeah but it's only displaying the coordinates. No-one knows about the planet."

"Well, no-one believed it still exist, but I'm very clever." The Doctor grinned. "And I happen to be heading the same way as you guys. Only I've got no ride. I'm in need of a ride. Can you offer me one?"

"To Pevolga?" Neil uttered, still baffled.

"Are you a hitchhiker?" Will asked.

"Me? Oh yes. Yes I am!"

Will sighed of relief. "Thank God, I thought you were going to hijack our ship."

"Oh no. I'm a traveller, tramping around, out to see the stars, hitchhiking through the universe." He held his thumb up and smiled.

"Great." Aurelia rolled her eyes. "That's what you get for not locking the cabin doors when you stop at fuel stations."

"I'm actually planning to write a book about it. The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy." His cheeky smile quickly faded when he noticed the lack of response coming from the humans. "Well, it's more a bed and breakfast guide sort of thing, anyway." He leaned forward towards the others. "Listen, you need me to get to your destination. You can't go to Pevolga without me."

"Ha, with the way things are going, none of us is getting there." Aurelia snorted. "The planet-nav is broken. It keeps telling us to drive in little circles around this God-forsaken wasteland."

"For the last time, it's not broken." Neil muttered, agitated.

"You're right, it's not broken." The Doctor said. "It's only corrupted. Something is interfering with it. Sending out signals to distort the calibrations. But it's nothing too fancy, not compared to these posh seats." He activated the sonic screwdriver. A blue light shone down on the planet-nav module, just for a second or so. "There. Fixed it." He tossed the screwdriver up in the air before putting it back inside his pocket. Neil and the gang moved closer to the cockpit. The planet-nav now sent out a holovid in full colour instead of only blue and red, and the planets, stars and moons displayed in the hologram were no longer shimmering dots, but downsized full 3D images of the real thing. Neil couldn't belief his eyes.

"That's freaking amazing." He muttered.

"I know." The Doctor said, tilting his chin up. Well, he may have overdone it a little this time.

Neil came closer to the screen and took the controls. They still worked like they used to. He scrolled over the map. He knew exactly where to look, having memorized the primitive map on the last pages of the book that he took from The Library, so many years ago. He scrolled into the Mare Superum, the great asteroid belt of Adratic constellation, passed the twin red giants Castor and Pollux that had burned for eons, till he finally reached the stable black hole, named Ammut, the devourer of the dead. Neil's breath caught for a moment. There it was, hiding inside the black hole, the black planet with the red sky. It looked exactly like he had imagined it. He held his hand in the projection and let the globe sit on his palm and slowly turn.

"Neil?" Will laid a hand on his friend shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Will, go outside and recharge the fuel tanks." He tore his gaze from the spinning planet and set his eyes on the Doctor. "Welcome on board Doctor. We're going to Pevogla."

TBC.


	2. Chapter 2

**Program**

1.

He could always tell that the night was coming to an end, even if it was still dark outside. It started with a slight tingling sensation in his fingers that spread from the tips to his wrist. The sense of touch would return, and after a while he would be able to move again. He tried to close and open his hands. His digits felt stiff and his movements were clumsy, as if he was trying to operate a bulldozer in a quarry on earth all the way from outer space. However, he was grateful for the eminent arrival of a new day. The night creatures that had tormented him from the moment darkness had fallen were finally retreating, quickly leaving his mind as they crawled out of every orifice of his skull, scuttling out of his ears, his mouth, his nostrils, and seeped out of the pores of his skin like cold sweat. Insect-like, with spidery legs and bulging eyes, his nightmares scattered as soon as they hit the floor and disappeared under his cot and in the cracks and corners of his cell where they melted with the shadows. Wetting his dry cracked lips with his tongue, he slowly turned his head towards the tiny window as far as his leather restrains allowed, and saw the first rays of sunlight entering the room.

At last, the night was finally over.

The noise of rattling keys. Someone was unlocking the door to his cell. Two orderlies entered, followed by the Doctor. They were too early. Normally he was allowed a couple of hours more sleep before they came in to drag him to the Doctor's office. Instead, the men were now removing his restrains, and pushed him in an upright position before they pulled the much-hated straight-jacket over his head. He glared at the Doctor with loathing as the orderlies continued the daily routine of crossing his arms and securing the straps on his back as tightly as possible. He was dead tired. Now that the evil things were gone and his mind was finally clear, he really needed more sleep. The last thing he wanted was to listen to some endless, tedious lecture from that self-righteous twat.

The men left him standing up in front of his cot. The Doctor came forward. After a short inspection, he gave a slight nod for approving their handiwork. It was difficult to say what was worse, that he had to suffer the humiliation to be hoisted in this SM bondage gear while the Doctor was watching, or that he had to endure that sad, dog-eyed look of compassion on his face.

"Sit down Harry."

Before he could even move a limb, the orderlies laid their hands on his shoulders and pushed his bum back on the cot. He glared up at the Doctor. The look he gave him could send a brave man running, but this was of course the Doctor's idea of the perfect circumstance for a friendly chat. When he crouched down to meet him eye to eye, he quickly turned his face away from him.

"Harry…Harry!…Master…"

That was a rather a surprise. The Doctor never called him by his real name.

"Master." The Doctor tried again. He wasn't comfortable using his patient's true name, but he desperately needed contact. He snapped his fingers in front of his face.

"What?!" The Master sneered. He would have bitten off those pesky wriggling fingers if his reflexes weren't so completely ruined by the pills.

"I know you're tired." The Doctor said, his voice dripping of nauseating sympathy. "You must have had a bad night."

"Oh, you have no idea." The Master snorted. With hooded eyes he gazed back at the Doctor. "What is it? Let me sleep." He said with irritated voice.

"I'm sorry but I can't let you. It's your big day today. Don't you remember?"

The Master shook his head. "What…what are you blabbering about?" The world was shifting in front of his eyes. For the first time since he was up, he gazed around the room. It looked different somehow. Something was missing.

"Where…" He paused for a moment, his head felt heavy as if the weight of a pallet of bricks was pressing on the top of his skull. "What's his name…Where is he?"

"Who?"

There was supposed to be a second cot in there. There was a man who shared his room. The bloke was a complete nutter, a loud, irritating nuisance of a madman, who snored like a horde of drunken Judoons. He was convinced that he was still there last night. He remembered, because he was yelling and spitting at him when he was dragged in. The Doctor glanced around the room.

"There is no-one here but us."

The Master blinked his eyes. He was still sitting on his bed, but the two orderlies who stood guard by his side were gone. He was alone with the Doctor. Daylight flooded into the bright bedroom through a large window that looked out over the lagoons.

"Wait." He shook his head. "This isn't right."

"What isn't?"

"This room. It isn't supposed to look like this."

"What's wrong with this room?" The Doctor asked, raising his eyebrows. "It's your own bedroom. Nice and airy, and with a gorgeous view. It's almost better then my office. You said so yourself."

"Oh no. I never said anything like that!" The Master responded. He had the awful feeling that the Doctor was playing one of his nasty tricks on him. "And this isn't my room." He stared with disgust at the vase with flowers on the nightstand sitting next to his bed, and the cheery curtains that framed the window.

"What do you mean?" Asked the Doctor, keeping an innocent face that was most infuriating to him.

"I was lying in a bare cell with padded walls and a piss stained floor! I had a tiny window with rusty bars. Not this! Do you think I am that bat-shit crazy that I won't notice?" He pointed at the Doctor, that stinking, scamming, swindling, swine. "You swapped everything in here! The bed, the floor, even the… the window." He paused as he realized how insane that actually sounded. "You…probably moved me into another room. Last night. When I was drugged."

He stopped, and stared down at his hands that had been moving freely to accentuate his every word. His jaw dropped.

He glared back at the doctor, eyebrows raised. "Uhm, excuse me, but where is my straight-jacket?" He asked with a polite little smile that looked, considering the circumstances, very out of place.

"You don't need one." The Doctor said in a calm voice. "In fact you haven't needed one for a very long time."

The Master's eyes grew wide. "Ah." He muttered. "But…I was wearing one just a minute ago."

The Doctor acted rather surprised. "No of course not. Don't be daft. You were just sitting there, having a nice little chat with me. No restrains what so ever." He waved his pesky fingers again in front of the Master's nose.

"Doctor." The Master whispered, while a mad smile slowly crept over his face. "What exactly is happening here?"

"Like I said. It's your big day." The Doctor beamed a broad smile back at him. "You're going to be released from the hospital."

"What?!"

The Doctor stood up and walked to the door. He opened it. "You see, no more locked doors. You're free to go."

"You're letting me go?"

The Doctor nodded.

"Just like that?" The Master squinted his eyes in suspicion, and studied the Doctor's face. Surely he was just playing with him, like a cat would toy with a mouse. But Doctor kept a serious face.

"Yes. You're cured."

"So wait a minute. You're telling me that I don't need to be locked up in here any more, because you think I'm sane?"

"Yes. Well, sort of." The Doctor added, scratching the back of his head. He was never very good at lying.

The look of bafflement on the Master's face was slowly replaced by a sarcastic grin.

"You're joking." He laughed. "Actually, I think YOU should be strapped in a jacket just for saying that."

The Doctor just shook his head.

The Master shot a nervous glance at the door. Outside was the long stretch of corridor with the seasick green floor and those seemingly endless rows of doors. At the far end, he saw the mechanical gate that separated the high security wing with the rest of the ward and the outside world. It was locked at all times when the door of an inmate's cell was opened.

"You wouldn't." He was still laughing, but the Master's mockery of the Doctor was quickly turning into paranoia. "There's a catch. There must be. With you there always is." He hissed.

The Doctor didn't say anything. He just put his hands inside his pockets and strolled calmly out of the room. He walked down the corridor, only glancing over his shoulder once to make sure that the Master was still looking. When reaching the front of the gate, he took out his security pass and swiped it over the magnetic stripe reader. A mechanical click followed as the locks became deactivated. The gate swung wide open and banged against the wall with a loud rattling noise.

The Doctor turned back to the Master.

"There's no catch. You're free to go." He crossed his arms over his chest, and stood there, waiting.

The mad smile seeped away from the Master's face. Slowly he rose from the bed, rolling his tongue over his cracked lips. His throat and mouth was still dry, but the exhaustion and the nightmares of last night were now completely forgotten. His muscles tensed. Both his hearts raced like mad.

"Well…if you insist." He spread his arms out and grinned. "After all, you're the Doctor here!"

He would really be bone-dead stupid if he didn't try to make a run for it.

He rushed out of the room, dashed down the corridor, past the Doctor and through the gate and out of the security ward. He knocked down a nurse with a metal trolley, sending metal dishes with needles clattering over the floor. When an elderly patient in a wheelchair was in his way he grabbed hold of the armrests, and gave the thing a mighty shove before jumping on board. The terrified patient screamed as they rolled down the hallway backwards, while the madman who had taken over his wheelchair loomed over him and shrieked with a deranged sense of joy.

"Oh hush you mummified loon!" The Master hissed. "Stay inside your sarcophagus if you can't stand a bit of fun!"

The old man didn't know how to shut up. The Master was about to punch his dentures out of his mouth when the wheelchair rolled into the main hall and crashed into a group of visitors. The Master rolled off and hit his head on the side of the reception desk.

"Help me! Help me, please!" The patient had landed on top of a white-faced woman in a pink dress. He stared at the Master with white-rimmed eyes.

"That man attacked me!" He yelled, pointing an accusing finger at him with a tremor in his hand. The Master groaned and hoisted himself up, nursing the pulsing swelling at the side of his skull. The hall, the windows and the people around him were swirling in front of eyes as if he was stuck on a merry-go round from hell.

The nurse behind the reception desk grabbed the phone to dial for help. Two orderlies, who had heard the old man shout rushed in and, recognizing the hospital outfit that the Master was still wearing, came running right after him. The Master turned on his heels. Still dazed by the blow, he ran towards the great rectangle of light that was supposedly the exit, pushing through the small crowd that had gathered around him.

"Stop him!" One of the orderlies yelled. "He's an inmate! Don't let him get away!"

"Get out of the way!" He barked. Hot blood rushed through his arteries and sent his reflexes flying. A sweaty, bulky bloke in a suit with the most unconvincing comb-over ever held his massive arms out in an attempt to catch him. He ducked underneath his sweeping arms and rammed his head in the man's stomach, yelling out a mad battle cry as he charged. The fleshy guy gave a satisfying umpf at impact before he fell down flat on his arse. The Master jumped over him with all the grace of speeding gazelle while he tossed his head back and laughed. It was only when he reached the glazed doors at the exit that he turned around and looked back. The Doctor stood at the other side of the reception hall with his arms still crossed over his chest. His appearance was calm and controlled, like a mighty God of old or some tragic Greek figure. A defiant smile appeared on the Master's face, just for a second or so, blink and you would have missed it. Then he reeled around before the orderlies could lay their filthy hands on him, and vanished after slamming the door shut right in their thick, stupid human faces.

2.

The twin red giants Castor and Pollux were like great balls of fire with solar flares leaping up from the scorching hot surfaces in continuous sequences. They were reaching out to the silver-winged cruiser that now looked tiny in comparison, a grain of sand stuck between two giant burning wheels in the sky. The Doctor, sitting in the front passenger seat, looked out of the sideview window when one of the flares that erupted from the surface of Castor burst out of the dying star's atmosphere. It shot like a wriggling tongue into space and missed the spaceship just by a few miles. The whole vehicle shook like mad in response.

"Oh, we are so dead." Aurelia muttered from the back seat, her face was fully drained of colour.

"Oh don't be so negative." The Doctor glanced over his shoulder back at her. "Look how steady we are going!" He added, right before a second flare just brushed by the right wing's tip and rocked the ship viciously from side to side.

The cabins above their heads flew open, sending the luggage tumbling down. Aurelia let out a loud shrill cry.

"Calm down." The Doctor said, pressing his hands over his ears. "It's just a bit of turbulence. It was to be expected when you're flying between two dying suns."

"I think I'm gonna be sick." Will mumbled. Before he could add anything else, he grabbed the plastic bag from the front seat pocket and gagged.

"Oh come on. Look at me, I'm not worried. And neither is your captain. Everything is under control, right Neil?" The Doctor turned to the young man in the pilot seat. Neil was sitting straight up in his chair like someone had pushed a stick up his arse. Sweat dripped down in rivers over his face while his saucer-wide eyes were glued on the digital pilot screen. His grip on the steering wheel was so tight that the good Doctor could hear the knuckles crack.

"S-Speak for y-yourself." The young man managed to stutter. He made the mistake to take a look at the view out of the cockpit front-window and had seen the impossible narrow crack in the middle of the sea of fire in which the ship was manoeuvring. One wrong budge to the right or left, and they would certainly be baked like a can of spam in the oven. He was starting to wonder what had he gotten himself into.

"Nah. You're doing fine!" To Neil's panic, the Doctor put his feet up on top of the dashboard, barely missing a couple of very crucial buttons and levers with his trainers. He leaned back with his hands behind his head as if he was just relaxing next to a comfy fire.

"You've got the right ship for doing this. Radiation-shield and heat-reflection system. I must say I'm actually impressed. I've been travelling a lot and most of people I meet who go wandering around the universe are hardly prepared for anything, but you lot got everything covered. That asteroid-warning system was certainly a winner when we flew through the Mare Superum belt. It's like you've been planning this for ages."

The doctor picked up one of the duffelbags that had come down with the turbulence and went trough it, raising a brow, and sniffing the content inquisitively.

"Hey, stop nosing in our luggage!" Aurelia shouted.

The Doctor tossed a handful of recording tapes over the back seat and fished out a device that looked like a telescope attached to a hand camera.

"Hey careful with that!" Neil finally dared to look away from the pilot screen and glanced at the Doctor.

"But this is marvellous!" The Doctor cheered. "A 18 billion megapixel infrared satellite camera! You can snap a shot of a single ant sitting on top of blade of grass all the way from the earth's stratosphere with this. "

"Put it back. It's really fragile."

"I know. This kind of technology never makes it to the mass market, much too expensive to make. These little wonders are often only made once or twice, as prototypes." The Doctor turned to his sideview and aimed the lens on the boiling surface of Castor. He took a snapshot. The little camera immediately digitalized the picture, and a display of the northern hemisphere of the giant star appeared as a holovid in front of his nose. The detail of the image was such that when the Doctor zoomed in, he could see the flames rising like sharp mountain peaks made of fire. "Oh this is beautiful. The man who made this is an absolutely genius."

"If you must know, my dad made it." Neil snapped. They were finally out of the dangerous narrow street that ran between the two giants, and were quickly leaving them behind. "Give me that. That thing is irreplaceable!" He turned on the autopilot and grabbed the camera out of the Doctor's hands. The Doctor stared back at him, his brows furrowed.

"Why are you going to Pevogla?" He asked, suddenly serious.

Neil wrapped a piece of soft cloth around the camera before carefully placing it back in the duffelbag. "I could ask you the same question Doctor."

"Okay, let me rephrase that. Why are you going to Pevogla in a stolen vehicle with all this really expensive technology onboard?"

The Doctor could hear Neil and the rest of the gang suck in a collective breath of air.

"What do you mean? We didn't steal this ship." Neil tried. "I said it was a rental."

"Rental? Oh right. Of course it is." The Doctor whizzed his sonicscrewdriver over the dashboard and a holographic driver's licence appeared. The man on the picture looked nothing like any one of them of course. "So, your name is not really Neil Armstrong, but mister Kalarharan Radish from the Adratic Colony of Menzor." He read, beaming a cheeky smile at Neil. "Oh, says here that you're a spaceship salesman. No wonder you got all the latest nifty accessories. Or maybe I should give the real mister Radish a call and ask him if he's missing anything from his garage back on Menzor." The Doctor pushed a button on his screwdriver and a dial tone came up from the speakers in the ship's dashboard.

"Wait! It's not what you think." Neil said.

"We're not criminals or anything." Aurelia quickly added.

"We're scientists!" Will commented. "Well, actually, we are PhD students from the university of Kawasaki. Astronomists. We work in the same project group."

"Look Doctor, we're field scientists. We study black holes. Most of the stuff that you see here are from the lab. Our professor knows we took it for a trip. There's nothing illegal about it." Neil explained.

The Doctor said nothing but lifted his eyebrows.

Neil sighed. "Except for the cruiser." He grudgingly admitted. "Alright, I took it from our neighbour. Mister Radish went on a holiday and asked me to feed his cat. I found his spare keycard and I borrowed the cruiser because I wouldn't be able to get here otherwise. It's not like I really stole it!"

"Nah, still not entirely convinced. If you're looking for black holes, why planning a fieldtrip to Pevogla?"

"That was Neil's idea. He found a book about this place in The Library." Will explained.

"It was written in the 44th century by an astrologist." Neil continued. "Every scientist in our field knows that the planet Pevogla is destroyed by the impact of an asteroid. At least, that's what is recorded by the community."

"The book on the other hand, is a bit more speculative on that subject." Will added, and gazed back at Neil.

"I though that the academic community might be wrong about this. Now before you think I'm thick Doctor, I know that most of these astrologists are just a bunch of crazy stargazers…but this is different somehow. It kinda made sense."

"Oh, I don't think you should be so embarrassed." The Doctor said, eyeing at the cradle reader that Will held in his hands. "Not all of them are trying to predict the next week winning lottery numbers by drawing lines between the shiny dots. Sometimes, you get lucky. Let me see that book."

Will handed him the holovid copy.

"The astrologist claimed that the planet of Pevogla wasn't hit by an asteroid." Neil continued. "It was actually devoured, swallowed by a black hole that was created by some sort of Godlike entities taking their revenge on the inhabitants. Now of course, to scientists like us, that sounds like superstitious nonsense, but she also wrote that in the end the planet wasn't really destroyed. It was hidden inside the black hole, kept on the edge of existence, locked inside its roaring black heart for eternity as a final punishment, the wrath of the Gods."

"A black hole that doesn't destroy what it has devoured-." The Doctor mused.

"Must be a stable black hole." Neil added. "Just like the one my father discovered, 40 years ago."

"Oh, so you're named after that Neil Amstrong!" The Doctor exclaimed, his string of thoughts seemingly distracted for a moment. "Professor Neil Bernard Armstrong, the famous astronomist! That man was a genius."

"Yeah, he was." Neil said, with a hint of bitterness in his voice. "It's a shame that the rest of the scientific community didn't agree on that."

"Oh your dad's ideas were just way ahead of his time. But he was brilliant. He still is." The Doctor activated the holovid and flicked through the pages at such a speed that it appeared like a blur. He closed it again, and tossed it back to Will with a simple flip of the wrist. The others had no idea that he had just read the entire thing, and even had learned some passages by heart.

"So what are you going to do when we actually get there?" The Doctor asked, while he took a glimpse out of the sidewindow.

"We study it of course." Aurelia rolled her eyes as if to say what else.

"What? Take pictures from the devoured planet while we are in orbit?" The Doctor leaned forward to the others. "Sounds like a plan I guess, but circling around a black hole from which you're not entirely sure that it's stable could be a dangerous."

"We are not getting too close. We'll stay at least 500 million miles away from the black hole's orbit for safety measures. It's standard procedure." Neil said.

"Good safety measures." The Doctor nodded. "Not a bad plan either. Should work. Although…" The Doctor pointed with his sonicscrewdriver at the scenery outside his passengerseat's window. "I guess it's a tad late for that."

Puzzled by the Doctor's words, the crew leaned over to his side of the cabin and peered out into the dark space. There, in full view of the three human travellers, was the black planet with the red, burning sky. A glowing crimson globe that slowly turned inside a whirling pool of darkness that sucked all the light of the nearby stars right into its black heart, leaving an aurora of darkness shimmering around the planet's contours.

Neil couldn't believe his eyes. "We're here." He shot a look at the cockpit displays and ran his hand through his hair as it hit him.

"We are here, and we are barely 20 miles away from the planet!" He cheered. "I was right! There is really a stable black hole!" He pulled Will and Aurelia close and hugged his two other teammates.

"Doctor! This is going to be so fantastic! With the data that we can produce with our recording devices, we'll have enough evidence to confirm my dad's hypothesis and prove the existence of stable black holes!"

"We're not there yet." The Doctor stated.

"What do you mean? This is as close as we are going to get to Pevogla." Neil laughed. "We don't really want to land on the planet. That's too dangerous."

The Doctor's face darkened.

"Doctor?"

"I'm sorry." The Doctor said truthfully, and whizzed his sonicscrewdriver over the steering mechanism. The ship immediately made a sharp turn to the left, entering the planet's orbit.

3.

He managed to steal a boat from the harbour and rowed all the way back to the mainland. When he reached the coast of the lagoons, the landmass that appeared at the horizon looked bleak and deserted, batching in a crimson glow, as if the sky itself was burning.

The Master lifted the oars out of the water for a moment, letting the tiny vessel drift freely on the waves. He closed his eyes and listened.

Nothing, not a sound, the entire place was as quiet as a tomb.

Disappointed, he tossed the oars back into the water and continued his journey. The dock appeared as if by trick of light, a grim stick of concrete that stretched out over the water. He moored the boat, and stepped on land.

In front of him lay a desolate wasteland, heaps of scrap-metal piled up high. Mountains made out of concrete rubble and broken bricks and towers of bended pipes, and rusty metal beams. It reminded him of the dumps in the outskirts of London where he was hiding after he came back wrong. The familiar, mouldy stench of rotting garbage hung thick in the air. Seagulls circled around the heaps like flocks of vultures around a carcase.

The rubble cut into his bare feet. A harsh wind swept up the shreds of paper from the ground and blew right through his thin hospital clothes. He shivered and hugged his arms around his chest. Where, on this stinking planet was he? It had been summer on Pevogla, but here, it was almost as cold as in the middle of winter far in the northern hemisphere. Another current of cold air stung his skin and send him looking for a shelter nearby.

He headed for an abandoned warehouse. Wooden beams were nailed across the entrance to keep out the tress-passers. He noticed that some of them were removed with force. The doors stood slightly ajar. Quietly, the Master sneaked through.

Inside, the old warehouse was stripped bare of floors and intersecting walls, leaving a vast space that was littered with small islands of junk of empty containers, discarded building material and bended metal. In the far corner of the building, a fire was burning in an old oil barrel. He went over there and warmed his cold body by the flames, stretching his frozen hands so close to the heat that he could feel them sting. From the corner of his eyes, he caught a movement in the heap of wet carton boxes nearby. A tramp slowly appeared from out of his shelter. He stared at the Master with a dazed look in his eyes. A needle was stuck in his arm.

"Are you a copper?" The words came out of the tramp's mouth like snails crawling from underneath a stone. The Master smiled. He could remember this human stain of a man.

"Oh no. Of course not. I can't stand them." He moved closed to the drug addict, who snorted, and slumped lazily against the side of his carton box home. "You look like a copper." The tramp mumbled. "Bloody awful pigs. Never leave me alone for a moment."

His stomach growled. All of a sudden, he remembered that he had not eaten for weeks. Hunger surged through him like an electric current, tying knots in his intestines, and flooding his mouth with saliva. He could not recall the last time that he had been fed even a meagre bowl of soup, or chewed down a piece of stale bread.

"Are you still here?" The tramp slurred without really looking at him. His head was sagging. The Master could see the dirty stains in the back of the man's neck. How wonderful it would be to sink his teeth into that. Red, succulent, hot flesh. Ripping it apart, killing and feasting. This mongrel human hacked, sliced, chopped and cut, converted into bloody raw meat, steaming entrails, fat bone marrow, and succulent slices of brain. He imagined how good would it feel when all that fat, blood and tissue filled his empty stomach.

"If you're not a copper. Go away. This is my place. I sleep here. Go find your own."

The tramp bluffed. But the man was too much intoxicated to really be any threat to the Master. In fact, he found his inability to offer resistance, absolutely mouth-watering. With a predatory slowness, the Master circled around him, picking up a rusty metal rod from the floor and wheeling it like a club. The tip of the metal scraped over the concrete, sending up sparks. The Master slammed the rod into the burning barrel. The loud bang that followed echoed in the empty warehouse.

"Hey, stop that!" The tramp shrieked, and stared wide-eyed at the Master, who responded with a smile that made his victim nervous.

"One." He counted, and again rammed the rod into the side of the barrel, frightening a flock of pigeons resting on the roof into taking flight.

"Two." He said, and he circled closer to the human, his nose picking up the scent of all that hot, delicious blood, throbbing and pulsing through the veins of his prey.

"Stop it! Are you mad!?" Another bang on the barrel made the poor homeless man jump. The needle broke off inside his arm and the glass syringe with what was left from his last fix shattered on the floor.

"Three!" The Master yelled, laughing madly.

"You know, I like your clothes." He cocked his head to one side and eyed at the black hoodie the tramp was wearing. "I bet they keep you very warm. I am freezing."

"Oh…so you want my clothes?" The tramp immediately pulled the hoodie over his head. "Here take it." He flung it in the direction of the Master. "Take it."

The Master pointed with the end of the rod at the red shirt and black trousers. The tramp got the idea. "Oh, alright. If you…you really want it." He took off his shirt and trousers and threw it over the hoodie. Left standing in his underwear and shoes, he shivered pitifully of the cold.

"Please, I've given you everything, now would you please leave me alone?" The poor wretch blurted.

The Master rested the rod on his neck. He rolled his head and glared at the man.

"Shoes. Remove your shoes."

The man did what he said, and the pair of worn-out dock shoes landed on top of the pile in front of the Master's feet. Satisfied, he gave the man a polite smile. "Thank you." He told him. It sounded almost civilized.

"Oh, can I go now? Please?" The tramp begged.

"Of course you can." The Master stepped aside as if to let him pass.

"Oh, no. Actually I was just messing with you. No you can't." He forced him back, pressing the tip of rod in the man's collarbone. The friendly smile was replaced by a deranged nightmare grin. "But thank you, good man. Thank you, for keeping the clothes clean from bloodstains."

"What bloodstains?" The tramp wanted to ask, but before he could utter another word, the Master smashed the rod at the back of the human's head, fracturing his skull. The tramp fell forward. His face hit the dirt.

"Four" The Master whispered, and sucked on his lower lip while hot blood gushed out of the man's head wound. He breathed in deeply, the scent of the raw wound dazzling his senses. Then his entire world turned red.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Home**

1.

This was not what was supposed to happen.

He lurched and fell down on his hands and knees in the rubble, while cold sweat drenching his new shirt. The dead tramp's hoodie was getting uneasily hot. His stomach growled, but now, it was to complain about the cramps it had to endure. Take the nausea that one suffered after consuming a whole turkey Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, multiply that by a million times and that was still a fraction of how horrible he felt. This was not what was supposed to happen to him. The tramp had been his first taste of humans after he was reborn in this cursed body. He remembered how good he had felt after he had slaughtered him. He recalled the satisfaction of consuming him, with the blood dripping down his chin and the warmth of these big chomps of flesh sliding down his gullet. He could remember how wonderful it was to still that raging hunger, that bloodlust that obsessed his mind and silenced his reason, how it was followed by the sensation of strength returning to muscle and bones, the rejuvenation of his dying body, albeit only for a short moment of time. He had wanted and expected the same experience from eating him again. A medicine for feeling blunted and used, to be given a purpose again in his seemingly futile existence and a restoration of his self-worth.

None of that.

He heaved painfully, his stomach rebelling against what it had been fed. His mouth filled with the horrible taste of death.

Only a few feet away from him lay the half-eaten corpse of the unfortunate tramp. His intestines, pink and coiled like fat worms, dangled from his ripped open sides. His limbs were chewed down to the bones. His brains spilled down the crack of his skull, while his eyes, wide and still fearful, stared vacantly at the rusty beams above.

The stench of blood filled his nostrils. He gagged and vomited. Pieces of what looked like liver mixed with skin and hair splashed on the grey concrete floor.

He felt disgusting. An undignified animal down on its four. The corpse of the poor tramp looked like it had been ravished by a mindless beast. The slaughter couldn't have been the act of a conscious man, and was absolutely unworthy of a Timelord. The debasing nature of his crime murdered his pride and stung his eyes with angry tears.

"Why did you do this?"

The Master didn't need to look to know that the Doctor was there. He was always there at these moments, to bask and loathe at him in his disgrace. When he was at his lowest, he could always count on the Doctor to hit him to the ground. He laughed bitterly, but kept his head bowed, fixing his eyes on the rubble. The Doctor will not see his grief.

"If only you could see yourself. You would turn away in shame."

He took in a deep breath, clearing the stench of death that kept lingering inside him like a disease. He forced back the tears and raised his chin up high. His face was now one of defiance. The Doctor stood in front of him, still looking self-righteous and Godlike, still with those old Yeller's faithful eyes that cried compassion.

With a shadow of a grin, he asked. "What else would I do?"

Seriously, what else, did that gullible idiot think, would happen, when you release a monster from its cage?

"I didn't let you out to torment yourself like this."

"Well, you were the one who thought I was sane." He chuckled hysterically.

"Why can't you stop remembering this? Just for once." The Doctor remarked with bitter frustration in his voice. "It's driving you straight back to the madhouse."

"Maybe I belong there." The Master answered with fake indifference. "Beast ought to be put in cages." He added with his voice dripping of sarcasm and self-loathing.

The Doctor did not respond, but turned his eyes away from him for a moment.

"There are places where you can go to get better." He said after a short silence. "Things that you can remember without turning yourself mad. People who you can seek to offer you redemption. Why do you keep stumbling around in the dark while you could just get out of it and look into the light?"

"Because these people, these things and places don't exist!" He snapped back. "They never had."

The Doctor took a deep breath.

"The slopes of Mount Perdition." He finally said in a gentle voice. "Back home on your father's land, with meadows of crimson grass stretching as far as the horizon. Do you remember that place?"

He did remember, and it cut right into his hearts. "Indeed, my father's estates. They used to be…" He searched for words to describe it. None of them ever truly did. "…magnificent…before you burnt it to the ground. It all burnt." He knew that his anger had no rationality, that it wasn't the Doctor's fault, but still he accused him of destroying their childhood home. "You saved your precious universe, but Gallifrey is gone!"

"Gone but not lost. Not here. Not in this place." The Doctor said. A warm wind swept across the empty warehouse, catching the trail of the Doctor's long coat.

"Go outside, and take a look for yourself."

The Master pressed his hands on his eyes and shook his head ferociously. No. Not another one of his dirty mind tricks. He had enough of being played like a puppet on strings, being dragged from one act to the next, while the Doctor controlled the script. However, he knew that he was helpless. Once the Doctor started there was no way of stopping him. The soft warm breeze brought the smell of the meadows, sweet wet grass and wild flowers mixed with the musky scent of pine trees from the higher grounds of the mountain. He could hear the wind rustling through the sweeping fields.

"No! Stop it!" He demanded, but his loss cut through his voice. "Stop it!"

"Just one look. I know that you want to remember. Besides, you're already there. It has always been there."

Although anxious, his hearts still secretly yarned to see his childhood home once more. Slowly, he lifted his hands from his eyes. Gone was the skeletal warehouse interior and the stiff tramp's corpse on the ground, the ugly evidence of his disgrace. He was now kneeling on top of a slope, surrounded by tall stalks of wild red grass. Beneath him, rolling down gently like a maiden's frock, were the pastures of his father's land, a sea of crimson that waved gently in the wind. For a moment, the Master's breath stalled.

"I'm home." He whispered. He turned back to the Doctor.

"We're back home."

The gentle smile that the Doctor gave him pulled his heartstrings. "That's Oakdown Hall, right over there." The Doctor pointed down in the valley, where a stately home sat in the middle of a beautiful garden that overlooked the vast stretch of farmland. It was a three level white Victorian, with large windows adorned by mullions and transoms, and with narrow, smaller windows that gave the appearance of sentinels. The front of the building stretched lazily over the entire breadth of the garden. On top of the parapet roof stood groups of Tudor style chimneys like guards. A curvy path lined by silver oak trees lead to the magnificent entrance of the house.

"Why don't you go down the hillside. Follow that path. Knock on the doors and see your family again."

For a moment, the Master was speechless. The dear memories of his childhood were evoked with the greatest of ease, and cut right into his soul. There stood the ancient silver oak tree that grew under his bedroom window. Its twisted old branches had once carried him as a boy when he searched for bird nests in the seemingly endless, careless summer days of his youth. Above the double door entrance was the family coat of arms in the spandrels, the emblem of his father, a sturdy silver oak, merged with that of his mother, a slender snow griffon, was proudly displayed on the shield. The rising smoke from the chimneys carrying the smell of burning wood brought him back to the kitchens, where he and Tetha first tasted his grandmother's robin-berries jam on a slice of fresh baked bread.

How he longed to return to that safe place of warmth and comfort. To forget about the ugly ghosts in the attic. To stop appeasing his fears and darkness, and just regress to that childlike state, to a world which was still uncomplicated and uncorrupted.

"Wouldn't you like to see your father again?" The Doctor asked. "After all these years, he's still waiting for you to come home."

He closed his eyes, and in his mind, he could see his father sitting in the library reading one of his much-treasured volumes from his vast collection. The smell of old printed pages and worn leather lingered in the chamber like the memory of an old dear friend.

"I…" He swallowed. The words became stuck inside his throat. Why did the Doctor brought him back here to see this? His eyes stung with tears.

The narrow path that slivered down the slopes to Oakdown Hall looked inviting, the silver foliage of the oaks rustling in the breeze summoned him home. All it took for him was to take the first step in this ascend, to follow the thread that pulled on his hearts. He closed his eyes. The clattering silver leaves and the windswept hills sung his favourite childhood song. He listened, and for a short moment he finally found peace.

It was just then, at that exact moment, that he heard it again, that sound, the drums of his past. It sliced through the tranquil moment like a knife, and killed his need to return to his Father's house. His eyes flew open, hearts racing. He rose and ran in the direction of the drums, his feet flying over the fields.

"No! No! No! Don't go there!" The Doctor's cries rang behind him, but they were for him to be ignored. He had been searching for that sound for so long. Ever since they had taken it from him, and had condemned him to his white-walled prison, he had felt lost and dead inside, his mind in decay and ripped apart. Now the sound had finally returned. He could hear its comforting rhythm, and embraced it with open arms like a lost lover.

"Master! Come back!"

The doctor didn't understand. He can't go back. Never. He didn't know how awfully silent it was inside mind. His head cleared from the drums was a cesspit of darkness with memories and monsters. He could see so clearly into it, now that the veil of drums had lifted, like he had seen the beast in his reflection when he murdered the tramp. He feared it, and he had been slowly going mad because of it. Such a different kind of madness it was, one without the strength and the joy, but one that weakens the soul and murdered the thrills of living. But no longer did he have to be without his precious drums. There, on the other side of the hill, he could hear them clearly. Calling him back to war and bloodlust.

His kind of insanity.

The Doctor ran after him. He reached the top of the hill where he couldn't go any further, and was forced to let him go. He watched helplessly, following the Master descend down the slopes. The smile on the other Timelord's face was one of deranged joy, an addict chasing after his obsession.

"Master!" The Doctor yelled after him. "Please, come back! You can't remember that! It will destroy you!"

The Doctor's warning echoed over the valley, but his words were scattered in the wind before it could reach him.

2.

The steering was useless. Neil grabbed the wheel and tried to force it to turn, but the thing was locked and wouldn't budge even for an inch. They were entering the planet's atmosphere at dazzling speed. The windows burnt with a fierce white glow as frictional forces generated such high temperatures that the air around the heat-shield combusted. The cockpit looked like a crazed funfair-ride, with red and green and blue warning lights all flashing at the same time in Neil's face while an orchestra of claxons blasted in his ears. Soon the red clouds parted and the surface of the planet became visible, a hostile landscape of black solid rocks and rubble. The cruiser was heading towards it. Falling like a comet, the point of the ship pointed downwards at a frighteningly steep angle.

"We're gonna crash!" Will yelled.

"You killed us, you maniac!" Aurelia cried, staring accusingly at the Doctor, who watched the approach of the black planet's surface with a seemingly total lack of fear. Ignoring Aurelia, his hand slipped inside his coat's pocket. He wrapped his fingers around the remains of the white point star as he closed his eyes and listened.

"Doctor!" Neil screamed. If someone could still reverse this and prevent it from becoming a fatal disaster, it would be him. "We're very near the surface. Unlock the steering or we will die! Doctor!"

The Doctor's eyes flew open, with his sonic screwdriver immediately ready in his hand, he aimed it at the wheel. A sequence of green lights flashed over the pilot display, and the steering was reactivated just in time for Neil to pull up with all his might. The cruiser tilted upward, and for a moment, the entire crew was pressed flat with their backs into their seats. Aurelia shrieked. The Doctor held on to the white point star, and looked out of the cockpit frontwindow at the swirling red sky. The faint rhythm of drums coincided with his own heartbeats.

Neil finally managed to steady the ship. It levelled out as they flew over the strange, bleak landscape of Pevogla, while their velocity quickly dropped to cruising speed. The young scientist let out a sigh of relief and slacked back into his pilotseat. The dials and information panels on the cockpit-display reported that everything was back in control, with every system still operational and functioning normal, except for one.

The autopilot-landing system was still running. The Doctor had not switched that off.

The ship landed on a vast flat plateau nearby what looked-like a dried up riverbed. As soon as they hit the ground, the Doctor left his seat and headed for the exit door.

"Hey, don't go outside yet! We don't have the readings on the atmosphere composition!" Will uttered.

Without a reply, the Doctor pulled the lever down to unseal the cabin-door, pushed it open and disembarked the ship. Will looked at the others. Pale faced, and still angry with the Doctor, Aurelia spun her index finger at the side of her head. Neil shrugged, and followed the Doctor outside.

3.

The world at the other side of the slope was a ravished landscape, consisting of twisted metal and steel, and trenches carved into the blackened earth with bloody crowns of barbed wire, a stark contrast from what was lying at the other side of the hill. The Master saw a vast troop of soldiers approaching, a million dome-shaped helmets blazing in the sun. Their battle chant resonated through the valley, accompanied by the beats they produced as they beat their fists.

"Son-tar-ha! Son-tar-ha! Son-tar-ha!"

It was maddeningly loud and distracting. Cursing under his breath, the Master charged down towards them, pressing his hands on his ears to block out the noise. Although in his confused state he still had the faint notion that he was descending into a battlefield and into hell, his ranting mind was occupied with only one thing, which was to follow the drumbeat, to find and catch it, and to seal it back inside his head where it belonged. He had no use for the Sontaran's battle cry. To him it was but inconvenient static noise. It became worse when the Sontaran's enemy appeared at the top of the hill behind him. He recognized the clash of steel boots marching in machine-like unison. He knew that rotten, electrically charged smell of over-heated wires melted with brain-tissue, the stench of a human electrocution. He turned and saw a vast army of Cybermen marching down the slopes, their steel breastplate armours glittering in the morning light, and their right arms stretched forward with clenched metal fists, ready to take aim.

"Orders of the Cyberqueen. Delete all hostile Sontaran elements! Delete! Delete!" They rattled in an unsettling sing-song voice. The sheer number of them accumulated their exclamations into deafening electronic static.

A rain of gunfire erupted around the Master as the Sontarans opened fire. Missiles were launched into the sky, shrieking like old witches as they passed close over his head, and smashed into the wounded earth were they exploded in blazing balls of fire. A bomb went off close to his right and sent his ears ringing, and for a moment, his world was silenced. Frightened that he may have lost the trail of drumbeats, the Master stumbled on. His knees quivered, a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in his skull, and warm blood oozed from the head wound, and trickled down in his eyes. He barely noticed it. Disorientated and frustrated, he tried to retrieve the signal while pushing through the blizzard of bullets and explosions. To his relief, his hearing was slowly returning. The loudest screams of the dying Sontarans started to penetrate through the thick membrane of silence.

Unnoticed, he had wandered to the bottom of the valley where a whole platoon of humanoids was waiting for incoming the cyborgs. Heavily armed, they stared at the injured Timelord who appeared in front of them with little more interest than a rhinoceros would have for a fly swarming around its tail.

"Halt! We have an intruder." The Master suddenly found himself at the wrong end of a line of Sontaran laserguns. "State your intent!" A Sontaran general ordered.

With his eardrums still wallowing in pain, the Master could hardly hear what the commander was telling him. He wasn't exactly listening either. He finally had picked up the sound of his beloved drums again. They came from behind the platoon, rising from the wall of dirt that the humanoids had dug as a last refuge of defence against the cyborgs. With a dazed, wide-eyed look, he wandered forward, seemingly unafraid.

"Halt! Do not proceed!" The Sontaran commander barked. "Stop, or we will open fire!"

There was no way they could stop the Master. The sound was like a drug, the lure of Odysseus sirens. All around him the world was coming to an end, but he had only ears for his precious drums.

The general fixed his eyes at the slopes where the approaching Cybermen were closing in on his army. The deadly blasts of blue energy beams fired from the cyborgs wiped out entire troops of prime Sontaran soldiers. He was wasting precious time on this insignificant, pathetic little alien.

"The intruder has obviously lost his mind. Dispose of him!" He ordered. The humanoids opened fire, and the Master dropped on the ground to avoid the blasts. Although his throat ran dry with fear, the call of drums still compelled him to hoist himself up and start running toward the source.

"Ha! A madman's tactics!" The commander barked. "Fire again! Eliminate him! Then we can proceed to glory!"

But before the soldiers could finish the Master, the cyborgs broke through their defences with a battalion of towering fighting-machines that moved with lightening speed on their six spidery arms. Laserbeams shot out of the single gigantic eye sitting in the middle of the podshaped body, and incinerated half of the Sontaran troops that were under the general's command. The Master escaped and ran through the white clouds of ash that was blasted into the air, breathing dead Sontaran soldiers into his lungs.

The trenches from which the call came, was now only half a mile away from him. He ducked when a claw descended from above and punched a Sontaran soldier to the ground. The humanoid screamed when a second claw, equipped with a sharp javelin at the end, came rushing down for him and impaled his body. Blood splattered on the Master's face, but he didn't care. This world had long since stopped making sense to him. All that mattered was that drumbeat. He stumbled on, his vision blurred by the coagulated blood in the corner of his eyes. Just a few steps more, and he would have reached the barbed wire fence surrounding the trench.

It may that his mind was in shock, and was playing tricks on him, for he saw human figures crouching behind the barbed wire. A group of young men peered over top of the dugout. Their faces looked familiar.

He abruptly halted and blinked his eyes. One of the giant cyberpods approached from the side, but his mind didn't register the imminent danger. Instead, it was turning madly, trying to recall who these young men exactly were. A claw descended, rushing towards the Master. One of the lads rose from his hiding position and yelled out his name. Wide-eyed, brown haired and with expressive brows, the tall boy steered the Master's memory into the right direction. He finally recognized them. These were the faces from his Timelord peers at the Academy, and the young lad who was yelling at him was Theta.

The sound of drums abruptly stopped, leaving the Master to hear and see the deadly chaos in which he was trapped. His friend's calls finally reached him.

"Master! Watch out!" The young Doctor yelled. For reasons that were unclear, his friend was still in the form of his tenth regeneration, while the others looked exactly like he remembered them when they were still in their first. But the Master had little time to contemplate. The cyberpod's claw slammed in his chest and he fell backward, hitting the rubble. Lying pinned down on his back, he stared right into a large circle of light looming above him. A second claw was descending, carrying a javelin that was aimed at head. Realizing what was about to happen, his hearts trembled with fear.

"No!!" Theta screamed.

A shadow appeared from nowhere. A man with a wild red beard who carried a silver rod grabbed hold of the Master. Just before the spike reached the defenceless Timelord, the man smashed his wand against the cyberpod's metal leg, and broke the white point star at the tip. A bright light erupted and they both vanished, leaving the mechanical claw to stab a hole into the dirt.

3.

A female computer voice rang in his ears.

"Attention, transmission to the Sontaran solarsystem aborted. I repeat, transmission to Sontaran solarsystem aborted. Expedition cancelled. I repeat. Expedition cancelled."

He regained consciousness in a large round chamber in the mid of an upheaval of voices and sounds. He was lying on the floor on his back. Theta's face was hovering above him, his brows frowned in concern. The Master stared in his friend's frightened eyes for a moment, noticing how strangely young they were, still unaware of bitterness and pain. The man who had saved him from the cyberpod's attack stood nearby, a respect-demanding figure dressed in a traditional Gallifreyan robe, he recognized him as one of his old tutors. From the look of it, he wasn't so much worried as he was displeased.

"Master? Mas…Koshei? Do you hear me? Please wake up."

He swallowed the taste of blood away. "Don't call me Koshei." He grunted.

A smile of relief washed over the Doctor's face. "Oh, you're awake." He looked up at the older Timelord. "Headmaster Redgrave. Look! He's fine!"

Hoisting himself up, the chamber swirled in front of him, and he had to take a deep breath to fight off the nausea. With hooded eyes he glanced around. They were in the transmission chamber, a large octagonal room, with three circular rows of seating surrounding the transmitter, which was a giant crystal pillar that triangulated the vibrations from the white point stars that were embedded into the bio-print pads in front of every seat. Groups of young men were standing around, chatting among themselves. Being barely 18 years of age, maturity was something that still needed to be refined in these young minds.

"This is the last time I'm joining a field-group with team disaster over there." A boy remarked. Ginger-haired and his face ridden with freckles, the Master recalled that he was the headmaster's own son. His name was Redgrave. The other boys in his company laughed. A tall lad with dark eyes and glasses, who named himself Ravenius, and a bulky bully named Bardson. "Bloody freak." Redgrave said, and glanced sideways at the Master.

Master Redgrave shot his son a severe look. The lad immediately stopped his teasing and left the chamber with his friends.

Redgrave tightened his grip on his wand and gazed down at the two lads. "You foolish boy!" He shook his head. "What were you thinking, running into the battlefield like that? You know the rules for these kind of expeditions, never intervene with the course of events! The war between the Sontarans and the Cybermen was supposed to last for hundreds of years. You could have done something thoughtless just then and there that would have stopped the war in its beginning, altering the course of time!"

"But sir, it's not the Master's fault." As always, the Doctor came to his friend's defence. "He didn't do anything grand that would endanger the history of the Cyber-Sontaran wars. It was an accident. He already got himself injured. You shouldn't blame him."

"Young master Doctor." Redgrave senior fumed. "Keep yourself out of this matter!"

"But sir, it isn't fair! He didn't do anything!"

Baffled, the Master stared at the Doctor, who was still his friend at the time in the Academy. How strange it was to see this 10th regeneration of Theta pleading for him. He particularly liked the fact that the Doctor seemed to be less articulate than he was going to be in the future, and was resolving to the standard kiddie arsenal of "not fairness" to try to convince the older Timelord. Let him go on a little longer, and the Master was sure that the Doctor would start stamping his feet on the floor to get the headmaster to listen.

"Even if he didn't alter the timeline, he endangered the safety of the whole class with his reckless behaviour!" Redgrave removed the white point star from his rod, and threw it on the floor in front of the Master. He turned to him. "If it wasn't for my intervention, you would have been killed in the Sontaran galaxy, 500.000 years in the past. Your father would have held us responsible." He thundered on, knowing very well that Lord Oakdown had powerful friends in the House of Lords. The Master meanwhile, had picked up the discarded damaged star. In the middle ran three thread-thin breaks that radiated from the centre towards the edges. The headmaster was right to be furious. The star could have completely fractured during their escape in the timevortex. The old nag had risked his own life to save him.

"And I will probably ask my father to force you to resign if you don't stop ranting and spewing spittle in my face." The Master replied calmly, and smirked. "My son has a nasty head-wound? How come? Oh my dear papa, it was headmaster Redgrave, he struck me with his wand for no good reason."

Master Redgrave sucked in a deep breath of air. His face was quickly reddening, but he managed to stay in control. Well, at least he refrained himself from slapping the insolent boy around the ears till they rang like the bells of the citadel at midnight. He waved angrily with his hand.

"Get hem to the healing unit." He said, with his teeth clenched and his jaws tightened. The Doctor lifted his friend from the floor. "And keep him out of my face!" The headmaster told him. The Master widened his smirk in response, and stared back at Redgrave senior with a defiant glint in his eyes, while the Doctor made sure that they both got out of the headmaster's sight as quickly as possible.

4.

His wounds healed quickly under the blue light of the bio-cell accelerator, and he was back on his own feet in no time. In fact, it took longer to stand in line to get the Tetanus-shot from the nurse-droid than it took to heal. Back outside of the medical-unit, the Master caught his own reflection from passing windows. Like the Doctor, he was still in his last regeneration. Displeased he stared at the popular politician gone homeless bum face, with the dirty blond hair and the rough stubble on the chin. Mad Harold Saxon, ruler of the wastelands. The dirty black hoodie that he was still wearing completed the look. He pulled the corners of his mouth downward and sighed. So this was how it felt to be cursed. Even now he couldn't change and leave this cursed form behind.

His friend didn't understand why he was so ill-tempered, but then, the Doctor had seen and pulled him through darker days.

"Oh don't look so glum, the headmaster didn't say anything about punishing you. From the look of it, you came away with a fright and a frown."

"I wasn't worried about that." The Master rolled his eyes at his friend. Although he realized that this conversation was locked in time and this wasn't really the past, and therefore it didn't exactly matter what he said to him, he still yielded to their usual bantering. "My dad won't allow him to hurt a hair on my head." He gloated despite of himself. "One snap of his fingers in the House of Lords, and old red beard is out of here before you can say -ruined academic career-."

"You wouldn't." The Doctor said, frowning in disapproval. "Well, you shouldn't. Actually, whatever you think of headmaster Redgrave, he still saved you from being turned into Cyber-kebab. So you ought to show some gratitude."

"Pff." The Master snorted. "He chose to become the headmaster. It's his duty to guard the safety of the pupils in this dusty institute, even if he hates their guts." He smiled cheekily, before continuing. "I swear. As soon as the last day of school is over, I will never set foot in this back-ward shithole ever again, unless it is with a company of demolition-droids, swinging a giant iron ball to tear this place apart."

"Master." The Doctor raised his brows as he recognized the signs. "Stop it. You're ranting again."

"I know I'm ranting, but don't tell me you don't feel the same."

They were crossing a long stretch of corridors that framed a large atrium. The late afternoon cast red beams of sunlight on the manicured lawn, and the line of columns threw tall shadows over the stone slates that were laid out in the corridor. The Master stepped over a grandly decorated slate that commemorated the erection of the ancient Gallifreyan institute in a time that lay so far in the past, that none of the Timelords who were still alive remembered it.

"Let the Lords of old keep safe this house of knowledge and learning." He read aloud in a mocking voice. "Ha! More a mindless prison of academic stagnation! And this." He gazed down at the motto that was inscribed in the emblem of the school. "To observe and rule. What nonsense!" He scoffed. How could one be so naïve to think that you would be able to change anything for the good by merely observing? How could you rule without interception or ownership? If anything his long years at the Academy had taught him, it was only that the universe was a chaotic mess, a gruesome place where misfortunes befall the ones who were perhaps the most undeserving, and where luck smiled on the most cruel and ruthless ones because they had the clear state of mind to conquer the weak. Theta however, seemed to had been following entirely different classes, for his view on it all was one filled with star-struck amazement and childlike-goodwill. It was therefore the young Master's firm belief that he should keep himself close by the Doctor's side. Such a young gullible soul with a moronically friendly nature was easily taken advantage of, and should be protected by someone who had his wits together. Funny enough, the Doctor secretly thought the same way about the Master. Young Theta wouldn't leave his beloved childhood friend, not for all the fantastic wonders and sights of the universe. The Master needed him, because he believed that is dear friend was somewhat mentally unstable.

"Wait till my father introduces me into the House of Lords." The Master continued, and sighed. "Things are going to change around here, mark my words." He turned to his friend. "You should come with me you know, after graduation. It's not like your mom has any plans for you."

The Doctor shrugged. "She mentioned an apprenticeship in the guild of clockworkers. You know my uncle Bezerk, the one with the glass eye, he's in the trade."

"What, time-watching? Yeah, right. Like you're gonna do that!" The Master studied the Doctor's face. The deflated look in his eyes when mentioning his mother's grand plans for his future said it all. "Come on Doctor. I know you. Sitting behind a desk all day to stare at the ticks and turnings of tiny wheels, you will never be content what that!"

"I don't think I'm made for politics." The Doctor sighed apologetically, and scratched the back of his head. "To be frank, I think I will offend most of the counsel members, simply by showing up. All that stiffness and awe for tradition. It's not me, really." The thought alone was suffocating. "But you, you should definitely go." The Doctor nodded. "Make your dad proud."

The Master was about to drop an alavanche of arguments on him to convince him otherwise, but their conversation was interrupted by a pellet of rock that hit the Master at the back of his head.

"Hey, you two!"

He turned around, irritated. Sitting on the stone balustrade between two columns were Redgrave junior and his gang. They had been busy working on their assignments on Sontaran warfare, sharing the data from their holovid copies from the library using the earphones that directly linked their minds together. The Master cocked his head to the side and gave the young man a foul look. He had never liked the little shit, who was pompous and devious beyond words, gloating every waking minute about his dad being the headmaster of the Academy. In fact, if it wasn't for that little, rather unfortunate "accident" that happened to the Master during the initiation ceremony, they both could have been best of mates, considering the overlap in character.

"Yeah you. I was calling you. The nerd and the freak!" His entourage giggled like a bunch of hormone-ridden schoolgirls.

"Master." The Doctor grabbed his friend's arm. "Don't."

He shook off the Doctor's hand and walked straight up to the gang.

"You." He addressed Redgrave with a dangerously low voice. "Stop calling my friend a freak." He was aware that the Doctor was a bit too tall and skinny for his own good, and his limbs were awkward, like they consisted mostly of knees, but this slimy stain of an excuse of a Timelord wasn't even good enough to mention his name, let alone insult him.

Redgrave stared at the other lad with slight bafflement. "I meant you. You're the freak, Oakdown! Idiot!" The others followed the bully's example. "Idiot! Idiot!" They repeated, laughing in the Master's face, like a flock of demented parakeets. He stared back at them, biting his lower lip till he tasted blood. The Doctor appeared by his side, and tried to pull him away from the mocking bastards.

"Don't listen to them." He begged. "Please, let's just go."

The Master shook his head. "What did you call me?" He asked, his voice flat.

Redgrave leaned forward, removing one of his earphones. "I said that you're a freak." The smirk he gave him was one of pure repugnance. "You know who everyone around here calls you?" He picked up a stick and tapped it against the column four times. "Four-beat-freak. The Master of migraines." A cruel smile appeared on his lips, while his friends started chanting the loathsome words in unison.

The Master rolled his head over his shoulder, and smiled back at his tormentors.

The Doctor's hearts skipped a beat. "No! Master! Don't!"

He swung out at Redgrave. His fist made a satisfactory dent in his smug freckled face, and he could hear the lovely crack of splintering bone when his knuckles wrecked his nose-bridge. The impact propelled the gingerhead with his back on the lawn, rolling over the grass while nursing his broken nose and wallowing in pain. The Master jumped after him over the balustrade and kicked the lad in the belly, making sure he hit the liver to achieve a good case of internal bleeding.

"No! No! No! Master!" The Doctor yelled, horrified by the violence. "Just stop!"

But the Master wasn't listening, and wasn't worried about the violence either. Al he wanted was to make sure that Redgrave was never going to use that nasty tongue of him again. Almost out of breath of the effort, he threw back his head and laughed hysterically when he saw the bloody wretch crawl away from him, desperately trying to dodge the vicious blows. At the other side of the balustrade, Redgrave's mates grabbed the Doctor by his wrists and twisted them at his back. Ravenius held on to him, and yelled at the Master, who turned his head and saw how Bardson hit his friend full in the stomach. The Docot let out a cry and bended double in pain.

"Hey!" The Master shouted, his voice trembling. "Get your stinking hands off him!"

Bardson spat on the floor and hit him again.

Gritting through his teeth, the Doctor looked up at the Master. "Oh no! No, please don't bother!" He shook his head in pain. "Just…do something sensible. Get the Headmaster!"

Instead, the Master uttered a mad cry and jumped at the larger boy, thrusting him to the ground. He was about to strike out when Bardson kicked him his stomach and send him rolling over the stone slates. He landed with his back against the balustrade. For a moment he was busy counting stars, and Bardson pushed his boot against his throat, pressing on his windpipe. Suddenly, filling his lungs with air was becoming rather troublesome.

From the corner of his eyes, the Master saw Redgrave stumbling towards him.

"He broke my nose! Hit him!" He screamed with his face red and bloated with anger. "Hit him! Teach this piece of shit a lesson!"

Bradson cracked his knuckles, and the Master, who was choking to death and thought he was rushing towards an imminent regeneration anyway, was preparing himself for another necessary trip to the medical unit, when he suddenly felt the pressure on his windpipe decrease. Bradson and Redgrave clutched onto their ears and sunk down their knees. The Master turned his head and saw the Doctor, wrestling himself free from Ravenius's grip while aiming his sonicscrewdriver at the bullies. The wavelength it was sending out was picked up by the boy's headphones. Amplified a thousand times, it wrecked havoc on their assaulters' eardrums. The Master stared at the Doctor, who came over to his friend and offered him a hand.

"Brilliant." The Master said with sincere admiration. He brushed the dirt out of his clothes and stared down at the defeated bullies, who were clutching at the headphones in their ears, but seemed incapable of removing them. "A sonic wavelength that interferes with neural signalling." The Master muttered. "Ingenious. Almost devious I would say." And he slapped the Doctor on his back with a wide grin. His friend stared back at him accusingly.

"Oh come on. They deserved it!" The Master moaned. He couldn't believe that the Doctor was trying to make him feel compassionate for these clowns. "In fact, if I could just borrow this for a moment."

He grabbed the screwdriver out of the Doctor's hand, and twisted the back, recalibrated the wavelength and amplified the magnitude, before he aimed it at Redgrave, who suddenly let out a loud cry of pain. His body started to spasm frantically.

Master! What did you do? Stop that!"

"There was still some room for improvement, don't you think?" The Master told his friend with a cruel glint in his eyes. "Oh yes, this is much better."

"No! That's enough! You'll injure him!" The Doctor tried to get the sonic back from the Master. But the Master was far too much enjoying the look of agony on Redgrave's face. He threw the weapon over to his left hand and back again to keep it out of reach of his friend, while keeping his aim at the headmaster's much-hated son.

"Master! Stop it! Just stop it. Just think!"

"Nah, who wants to think if you can have fun!" He laughed and pushed the amp up a notch, sending the volume of the signal through the roof. He could almost hear poor Redgrave's eardrums split under the assault. The lad was now literally clawing at his ears. A trickle of blood ran down his earlobe.

"Please Master, come to your senses. You're hurting him! Stop it!"

But the Doctor's pleading fell on deaf ears. The Master was actually contemplating how to multiply and spit the signal to get the rest of the gang, especially that brute Bradson, a taste of his bitter medicine, but his revenge was cut short by a sudden blast that hit his hand. The Master let out a cry, more in surprise than in pain, and dropped the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The seizure-like motions of Redgrave immediately stopped, leaving the wretched boy in tears of pain and humiliation. The Master turned and saw how headmaster Redgrave senior strode towards them, his red cape billowing in the wind and his rod with a new white point star flashing crimson. The unforgiving fury that swirled in the older Timelord's eyes was still capable to stir a flutter of fear inside his defiant hearts.

From the look of it, he wasn't going to get away with it this time with merely a fright and a frown.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Minefield**

1.

"This is absolutely insane." Will muttered as he studied the readout from the computer screen. "Neil! You've got to see this!"

Neil rushed over to his friend. His feet were sinking fast into the soft planet surface, like he was stepping on a fresh layer of powder snow. He made a mental note to himself that they should take a sample of it back to the lab to examine, although the list of things he had to do was getting seriously long.

"What is it?" He asked. Will handed him the printout.

"See this. These are the gravity measurements during our landing."

Neil stared at the impossible numbers. "This can't be real. The readings must be wrong."

The Doctor peeked over the young scientist's shoulders. "No, they're correct. Nothing wrong with it except that your machine has run out of digits. You should add at least six more zeros to that number."

"But that is madness. With that amount of pressure, the cruiser would have been pressed flat like a pancake. If these numbers were true we wouldn't even have survived."

"It's the planet." The Doctor explained in a matter of fact voice. "The gravity of this relatively small orb is colossal. Heavier than a neutron star, heavier than all the mass in this solar system put together. Heavier even than what's inside a black hole, which I'm afraid, your much-sought after stable black hole actually is." He looked at Neil. "A normal black hole. The type you find in about every backwater galaxy in the universe. I'm really sorry to tell you this."

Neil stared at the Doctor with a flabbergasted look on his face. "What are you trying to tell me? That this black hole isn't stable?"

"Your stable black hole is more common than muck. It's ordinary, because it isn't the black hole that refuses to devour the planet. It's the planet that refuses to be devoured."

"What?" Neil frowned in confusion.

"Oh alright." The Doctor sighed. Sometimes it did frustrate him that his human companions' minds, especially those not of his own choosing, were working in such an agonizing slow pace. He picked up a rock from the ground and took in a deep breath as fuel to kick-start his babbling. "Let's say this is Poveglia. This was once an ordinary planet, just doing its spins and turns in its own solar system of twin suns. Then something happened to it. The planet collapsed into itself, or an asteroid rain of dark matter hit it. It doesn't matter how or why, but what does matter is the result. The planet becomes so heavy that its gravity starts to exceed that of every normal planet or any other celestial body in the sky. It even exceeds that of a black hole that had accidently wandered into the wrong neighbourhood, so to say, where it's captured, imprisoned by Poveglia's gravity. In millions of years and after millions of turns, the planet comes too near to the black hole and gets sucked in." He pulled on one side of the rock with his right hand. "But then, the planet has its own strength, its own massive gravity that counteracts with that of the black hole." He pulled on the other side of the rock with his left hand. "Two equal forces that counteract in opposite directions equals zero. And so the planet becomes stuck inside the black hole."

"Not a stable black hole then." Will huffed, sounding disappointed. "There is nothing special with it?"

"No, not really. The only thing that is extraordinary here is the planet where we are standing on."

"Well, that kinda sucks. I'm not writing my thesis on planetology. So this entire trip is rather useless."

"Wait a minute, Will. Where is your scientific inquisitiveness?" Neil said to his discouraged lab partner. "Don't you see that the Doctor is right? We're standing on an absolutely, extraordinary planet! Sure it's a shame about the stable black hole thing, but look at this!" He pointed at the readouts on the planet's gravity, just when Aurelia came to see what was going on. "Look around you mate!" Neil continued. "We're staying. We've got the whole planet to explore!"

"No, actually you're not."

Neil abruptly put an end to his encouraging speech and looked once again dumb-folded at the Doctor.

"Excuse me?"

"You're not staying."

"What?"

"It's too dangerous. You said so yourself."

"Great. We got everything out of the cabin already." Aurelia moaned. "I'm not dragging all those heavy boxes back in."

"Doctor, this my chance to make something of myself. To re-establish my father's name. You can't take this away from me." He paused to think for a moment. "Actually, why would I listen to you? You can't tell me where to go. It's my ship and my crew!"

"Your crew, and one mister Kadish his ship to be more correct." The Doctor's accusing stare forced Neil to look away. "Anyway, that's not the point."

"Then what is your point? Why can't we stay to collect more data?" Neil moaned. Irritated he grabbed a handful of black dirt and tossed it in the air where it spread like a thin black shroud, carried away in the wind. "What's so bloody dangerous about a planet filled with soft black sand?"

"That's not sand." The Doctor spoke in a flat voice.

"No?" Neil raised his brows.

"It's carbon mixed with metal oxides. It's the residue that remains after bio-matter is burned under intense heat. In other words…it's ash."

"Oh…" Neil and the others stared around. Everywhere they looked, stretching as far as the horizon, the entire planet's landscape of shifting dunes, valleys, and deserts consisted of nothing else.

"Is this what you think is left from the inhabitants…" Neil asked tentatively.

The Doctor only nodded, his face grim when he turned around with his hands inside his pockets, strolling away from Neil and the others.

"Wait." Neil ran after him. "I still don't want to go back. Not without getting an idea what the hell happened here first."

The Doctor halted and stared at the young scientist with a frown on face.

"Tell me Doctor. Why did you come here?"

"What does that have to do with what you want to find out about the planet?"

"Because there is a link. I know there is. You knew that we could land here and you knew about the breathable atmosphere, and the black san…the ash. Do I need to go on? You came here because you were looking for something Doctor. Tell me, what is it? What are you looking for?"

The Doctor looked away and stared at the two red giants that blazed across the sky. The crimson rays of the twin suns set the dunes ablaze in a dark orange glow. There, cradled between two hillsides lay a lake of pure light. The Timelord suddenly picked up a faint vibration. He took out the white point star and found it singing, emitting a soft, high-pitched tone that carried for miles over the desolate landscape. It was replied with a similar tone, like an echo, but one that was amplified in volume by hundred times or more. The resonation came the dazzling lake that shimmered in the distance.

"Doctor?" Neil tried.

Without saying a word, the Doctor ran up the dunes in the direction of the lake, holding the diamond in his hand like a guiding compass.

"There he goes, off again." Sighed Aurelia, who had finally caught up with Neil. "Well, good riddance. Shall I get Will to drag everything back in so we can get the heck off this scary planet?"

Neil just shook his head, and ran after the Doctor.

2.

He was locked up in the tower yet again. His tutors seemed to lack imagination when it came to punishing him. The grim room with the barred window near the ceiling, the damp walls and cold stone floor, and the pest-ridden mattress in the corner were more than familiar to him, having spent at least one tenth of his time at the Academy in here. The door was double-locked, but he knew that there were ways to get out easily. A bended piece of metal that could be retrieved from the mattress springs was enough to turn the lock. Otherwise, he could always remove the grid from the ventilation shaft and escape by crawling into the pipes. But he didn't want to get out. Not tonight. His mind was too occupied, his hearts were weighed down too heavily with troubles.

As always, it was the quietness of the night that broke him. He couldn't stand the sight of this familiar place, and why, he asked himself, did he keep playing his part in this travesty of sorry memories? His mind was wandering, he wasn't too proud to admit it at last, but he was still capable of short moments of lucidity. If he could still remember that this wasn't the present, why did he keep moving on with these events? Surely, there was no benefit in that.

Lowering his head, he buried his face behind his hands. Now that his world was covered in darkness, he felt somewhat safe. If only the drums would return to him. He was convinced he could sleep soundly again if they did.

He heard a gentle tapping coming from behind the locked door.

1-2-3-4. He counted, and again. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4.

He sprung up from the mattress and crouched next to the door, pressing his ear on the wooden panel. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4.

"Master?" A whisper came from the other side. It was the young Doctor.

There was disappointment in his voice when he answered. "Yes, I'm still here."

There were two faint clicks as the locks turned followed by a slight squeak from the hinges. The door opened and the Doctor peeked his head around the corner.

"Ello there!" He said, with a silly little grin. "Thought you would like a bit of company." He strolled in, carrying a linen bag that he handed over to his friend. "Pfff, This place still looks mightily depressing." The Doctor commented, noticing the mouse droppings on the floor and the damp patches in the ceiling. "They really know how to encourage you to break of here, don't they?"

Despite his troubles, the Master smiled. "What is this?" He asked, as he inspected the content of the bag. There was a large piece of bread, a bit of cheese, and slices of ham in there, together with a bottle of gooseberry cider.

"Your diner, my lord Master." The Doctor said, and parked himself cross-legged on the mattress. "Well actually, it's my diner, but I figured you would be hungry since you were also forced to skip lunch, as you had other obligations." The Doctor teased, raising his brows.

"You shouldn't have bothered." The Master muttered grumpily between mouthfuls. He was actually starving and was stuffing himself with the cheese and bread. "Really…I can take care of myself."

"I know." The Doctor nodded, taking pleasure in the fact that the Master was enjoying the food. "And I'm sure you can."

The Master gazed at his friend who still carried a nasty bruise on his cheek under his left eye. "How's your face?" He asked not without a sense of guilt.

The Doctor shrugged. "It will heal."

"Why didn't you go to the medical-unit?"

"Nah, you still got your bruises. Bloodbrothers, that's what we are! Besides, they probably gonna make me take a Tetanus shot when I go there. You know how I feel about needles."

"I still can't believe that those shit-heads did this to you."

"I still can't believe what you did to Redgrave." The Doctor said, staring at his friend.

The Master gazed back at him, then shook his head and laughed bitterly. "I can't stand it that you're still defending that bastard. He let those dogs of him trash you! I was trying to get him off your back."

"I had already stopped them. He was lying defenceless on the floor and still you hurt him on purpose."

"Tell me, is there ever another reason to hurt anyone, but to do it on purpose?" The Master ranted, getting upset with his friend. The way the Doctor looked at things. He really didn't understand. "And what are you condemning me for? Redgrave is a vicious bastard. He's the bad guy here, not me!"

"Redgrave is not a bad person. He's just an idiot. You don't need to behave like an blimey idiot around him as well."

The Master suddenly flung the remaining pieces of bread against the wall where it shattered in crumbs.

"Why are you always doing this?" The Doctor asked.

"Do what?"

"Get angry, and stop thinking."

"I was thinking."

"No you didn't. If you did you would have known that what you did was wrong."

"All right, you know what I was thinking? I was thinking how to get that smug smile off his face, preferably with something blunt and heavy, and anvil would be nice." The Master answered in a sarcastic tone.

"So you tortured Redgrave, only because you wanted to take revenge. Just because he made some stupid remark." The Doctor said reproachfully.

"I really don't see the wrong in that." The Master tried to laugh, but he can't.

The Doctor's voice softened when he saw how his friend clutched his head between his hands. "Master, you are better than this. I know you are."

The Master only shook his head, and kept his face down in the shadow.

"What is it?" The Doctor asked with concern. He wrapped his arm around his friend's shoulders like he always used to do. "Is it your head? Is it hurting again?"

"Yeah…no…not really."

"Do you hear those sounds again, those drums?"

"I wish." The Master blurted. "Oh how I wish I could hear them."

"You're not making any sense. I thought you said they hurt?"

"Master of the migraines." He joked bitterly. "No, I can't hear them anymore. They're gone. Actually, they've been gone for so very long now that I sometimes find it difficult to remember how they were."

"Well, that's good isn't? I mean they didn't really do you any good."

"You still don't get it, do you?" The Master took in a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. "After all these years…. I just can't imagine myself without them. I'm just…I'm afraid that I will forget who I am."

"You're the Master." The Doctor answered after a short silence.

"You're the most clever, most brilliant person I know, and the most wonderful friend I ever had. Now you don't need those awful drums to remind you of that."

"Is that so." The Master gazed back at the Doctor, moved by his gentle words.

The Doctor nodded solemnly. Seeing him like this hurt his hearts. Ever since the day that the Master came back from the initiation ceremony and was given his chosen name by the elders, he was changed for the worse. What ever he had seen in the raw heart of the time vortex that day, whatever he had heard, it haunted him, twisting and forming the young Master like a sapling in the open field exposed to a vicious wind. In the beginning, it had seemed that the Master knew what was going on. He had tried to hide it. The Doctor remembered a ten year old boy who was always putting up a brave face and smiled quite a lot, although it was no more than a mask that he wore to hide the darkness and the fear inside. No, there was nothing wrong with me, Theta. Maybe I sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of night, but I know that those nightmares aren't real. They can't be. Besides, if I'm afraid, who's there to protect you when the real monsters come?

Time had passed since then, and with that many carefree and joyous summers spend together at the Oakdown estates, but also countless of disasters, ugly things that his friend shouldn't have done, not with a brilliant mind like his.

Now the Master could no longer hide, his mask had worn thin, with cracks appearing from where behind the darkness lured. The Doctor feared that soon one day, he would remove that old and worn mask from the Master's face, and find that his childhood friend had vanished, only to be replaced by the monster that had followed him out of the schism. And yet, he told himself, yet there was still time. There were moments of lucidity in him, rare like diamonds but equally brilliant, in which he looked into the Master's eyes and could see that his friend was still in there, waiting for him to get rid of the monster.

The Master thought he didn't understand, but he did. He really did.

"Master." He said, his voice gentle. "You asked me what I want to do after graduation. I thought long and hard about it. But I think I finally know. And I would like to show you."

3.

The transmission room was left dark and cold, and felt strangely large with the crowd of students and tutors absent. The Doctor placed his hand on the central crystal and let his heartbeats be carried into its core. Soon the monolith returned the Timelord's heartbeats with faint vibrations, a tender echo mimicking his hearts' rhythm.

"What the hell are we doing here?" The Master asked as he observed how the Doctor was running around like a dachshund on drugs, activating the navigation system and setting up the requested coordinates.

"Take a seat. Should be ready in a jiffy." His friend replied with a broad smile while he kept working on the program. "Just have to make sure that they don't notice the energy drain once this is activated. I don't want you to get into trouble for a second time today. Even if technically, I actually should be blamed for this, I don't think headmaster Redgrave would bother to ask."

"My-my. The Doctor is becoming rebellious." The Master teased. "Who would have thought? So what's next, you're gonna challenge my personal record for getting send to the tower?"

"Nope, absolutely not. You're the king of getting grounded. I give you that honour to keep." The Doctor typed in the final sequence of information and pulled the lever. The bioprint pad in front of the Master's seat switched on and the core of the transmitter crystal lit up with a bright red hue while it began to sing. The white point star imbedded in the bioprint picked up the vibration from the crystal and answered with a similar pitch.

"Ha! Perfect! Ready to go?"

The Doctor hopped in the seat next to the Master.

"Where are we going?" The Master asked with a frown.

The Doctor beamed back a smile at him. "Oh you'll see. It's the best place in the entire universe."

4.

They materialized in the middle of a field, somewhere in the south of Belgium. It was night-time and the stars were out in a cold black sky. The field was torn open, mud and trenches everywhere you looked, with miles of wires dividing the ever-shifting frontlines. The Master was freezing. It must be the middle of winter, for most of the mud was caked with a layer of ice, and the barbed wires were covered in white frost. He wrapped his arms around his chest and wanted to head for the edge of the open field.

"Stop! Don't! Don't move!" The Doctor whispered rather urgently.

The Master turned to him with a puzzled look. "What?"

"My mistake. Not entirely correct coordinates. Right time, right place, but I should have been more precise with the zeros behind the dot. We're standing in the middle of no man's land." The Doctor waved his hands madly as he tried to explain. "It's because of a war between two tribes on this planet. They called it the great war. The war to end all wars, but later it was known as world war one, because that "to end all wars" bit didn't really come true. Anyway, they shot this archduke, which wasn't really why they had this war, but it was a kind of trigger for further disaster…"

The Master looked bored and irritated. "Doctor…"

The Doctor paused as he realized. "Ah. Sorry. I'm babbling again, am I?"

The Master nodded.

"Sorry, sorry, I will get to the point. Where was I? Ah, we're not supposed to move because we're standing in a minefield. One wrong step and we're done for. So. Just. Don't move."

"We're in a minefield?"

"Yup."

"In the middle of the night, in the cold, in full view of the trigger-happy soldiers. And we're not suppose to go anywhere?"

"That kinda sums it up." The Doctor grinned dorkishly.

"Great." The Master sighed and rolled his eyes. "Uhm, can you please take me back and lock me up in the tower again? I had this great thing going on with squashing bedbugs with my thumb and watching the mould grow over the ceiling. I would really like to go and finish that if you don't mind."

"I thought we both agreed on that I won't babble and you won't rant?" The Doctor nagged.

"I wasn't ranting. That was sarcasm."

"Actually, this is what I wanted to show you."

"What? A mud-field teeming with landmines?"

"No, I meant this planet. You don't know it, not like I do, but I can tell you that it is the most extra-ordinary place in the entire universe."

"It's Earth." He sighed, rolling his eyes again. "You brought me to Earth."

The Doctor frowned, baffled as he was by the Master's correct guess. "How did you know that?" He said with an air of disappointment.

"Ha! That's easy enough! You always go there. You're obsessed with it. It's like this tiny insignificant blue speck of a planet in this backwater solar system has this gigantic gravity pull on you, because you keep orbiting around it like a demented satellite. You just can't have enough of it."

"But…I only came here three times before, including this one time with you." The Doctor said, perplexed.

"Well it's not going to stay like that, is it?" The Master scoffed. "Back in the tower, you told me you knew what you wanted to do after we left the Academy." He pointed around at the deserted fields. "Let me guess, you're going to leave Gallifrey, and come here to this place, this Earth." He spat out the word like he tasted something foul.

"Master-" The Doctor tried.

"I'm not blaming you. Running away is a lot better than what your mom has in mind. Time-watching is a waste of time, they say, and sure as boring as hell. Still, I would have liked it if you had joined me in my apprenticeship in the House of Lords." He gazed back at his friend. His face showed a contradictive mix of anguish, anger and disappointment. The Doctor remained silent, and looked away over the fields.

"Come on then." The Master finally said in a miserable voice. "You didn't drag me here all the way from home to show me your future residence. What is it?"

"Sorry?" The Doctor turned his gaze back at him and furrowed his brow.

Getting impatient, the Master rubbed in his eyes and tilted his head up to the star-studded sky. "Obviously, you are bound to give me lecture. Perhaps there's something metaphorical that you would like to address, to show me how wrong I was today with that Redgrave brat. Oh Master! Mend your evil ways, or I fear you'll end up like the weeping angels of old, frozen in time and punished for their wickedness for eternity by the righteous Timelord elders." He mocked in a high-pitched voice that was supposed to imitate the Doctor. "Let me show you this battle-scared land, where the humans –"

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "How did you –"

"Yes, humans." The Master continued not without irritation. As if he didn't remember the Doctor's favourite pet-race. "The pesky biped monkeys who inhabit this Earth, who wander around killing each-other in this futile war-" The Master paused in the middle of his rant. "Actually, where are they?" Something was wrong here. He glanced around. "I've seen this place. A while ago I was stranded here in 1914. I remember how that was. Even at night there were sweeping searchlights and mad gunfire going on." He held his breath and listened. "It's so quiet now." He muttered. "Where are the soldiers?" The Master stared at the Doctor with a confused look on his face.

"It's Christmas Eve." The Doctor said in a gentle voice. He put his freezing hands inside the pockets of his coat. "Christmas, by the way, if you don't already know because you seem to know everything, is a special kind of human holiday."

"I know what a human Christmas is." He grunted. Of course he knew. How could he forget? He had been returned into this cursed body right on Christmas Eve.

"Why aren't they fighting?" He asked the Doctor. "War is war, you cannot just stop guarding yourself against the enemies, because you want to go home to the wife and cut the Christmas roast."

"Ah, but don't you see? That's why they are so wonderful! These humans, they are not like us."

"You mean they're not sensible? No of-course not, I always thought they were dim-witted, stunted little apes."

"No! No, they are brilliant. At least they can be if they chose to be. They can also be cruel, and vicious, like in this war. They can be merciless and beastly. With an instinct so keen on survival, these humans are capable of anything, including destroying their own kind. However, if they want to be, they can be kind and caring, and can be capable of such love, and such sacrifice. They're such a contradictive species, so complex. Go around the universe and you hardly find any another race that even remotely comes near."

"How absolutely fascinating." The Master responded with a voice dripping of sarcasm. The Doctor let his shoulders drop in hopelessness. If the Master was still waiting for him to come up with a metaphor, he had certainly missed it. Sometimes he could be so boneheaded stupid.

"Do you know why they are not fighting?" The Doctor stared at the Master in the hope that he would finally understand. "With all this bloodshed, with hundreds of new victims every day and many millions dead already, these soldiers, not the officers, have decided that tonight, for once, they will stop fighting, because it's Christmas Eve, and for both sides, this equals peace. They are tired of the war. They want to go home to see their family again. To be with their loved ones. If they had ever fired a gun, taken a life, and hated their fellow man, it was because they feared for the lives of those who are not here with them in these miserable trenches. In the everyday madness of war, they might have forgotten how similar they are, these soldiers in different uniforms, speaking in different languages, but tonight they are remembered. Tonight it's Christmas Eve, and it's peace on earth, because every boy and man sleeping in these trenches dream of the same thing." The Doctor voice trailed off. From the trenches behind them rose a familiar melody.

"Stille Nacht. Heil'ge Nacht. Alles schlaft, ensam Wacht."

"What are they doing?" The Maser asked, astounded.

"They're singing Christmas carols."

At the other side of no man's land, the same melody suddenly arose from the trenches at the English side.

"Round young virgin Mary and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace."

And then the most unusual thing happened. The soldiers from the two different sides started to sing together, each still in their own language, but catching the same pace and melody. The two versions of the familiar Christmas carol became one song that drifted over no man's land like a heart-rending hymn. Mist rose up from the cold damp earth, as if with this the ghosts of the fallen where called to rise from their unmarked grave to return home.

The Master closed his eyes and listened to how these two melodies gradually melted into one. Two entities seemingly so different in nature, separated by language and culture, but in their hearts, there was the same message, a same longing for reconciliation and an end to this madness. Although he still did not comprehend the Doctor's infatuation with these humans, he did understand the yearning that these soldiers had for a normal life, and end to the darkness.

"Master."

He opened his eyes again to see the Doctor still standing in there, waiting for him.

"You're right. I didn't just bring you here to show you this planet." He stared at the ground and kicked away a small of rock. He was uncertain how to bring this up to the Master.

"Remember that old, derelict Tardis that we've found two years ago outside the Citadel in the Graveyard fields, the one that was decommissioned? You were so disappointed when we discovered that the core was dead. Guess what." The Doctor held in his breath as if to cherish the moment of surprise. Meanwhile, his hearts were going rampant. The Master just stared back at him, his facial expression blank.

"It wasn't busted after all." The Doctor grinned sheepishly. "I found a tiny spark of an energy cell, tucked away in the corner at the base. It took me 10 years of my life to get it going, but it was worth every second." Taking comfort in his habit of rambling, the faraway look reappeared in the Doctor's eyes. "After that it was just easy peasy to get the whole system up and running again, although it took some time for the Tardis to re-adjust itself to me, sensitive as the technology is to a change of Lords, but I think it's starting to warm up to my endearing persona."

"You have a functional Tardis?" The Master finally asked. A sting of green envy touched his hearts. They were not allowed to own a Tardis before their second regeneration. For each young child of Galligrey, a Tardis was grown on the day the boy or girl was born. Starting from a tiny seedpod, it could take more than a hundred years before they were fully matured and could be put to use by the Timelord to which it was physically and telepathically linked. The Master wasn't allowed to see his Tardis before he had at least regenerated once from old age, let alone use it in order to leave Gallifrey. But now the Doctor claimed that he had one that was fully functional, and he blamed himself for his stupidity. They had found the old thing together, but why didn't he think of it himself to go back to the wastelands and try to restore it? That Tardis could have been his.

"As soon as the last day of the Academy is over, I will be leaving." The Doctor continued, seemingly unaware of the Master's jealousy for his ownership of the new Tardis.

"It's not only Earth that I would like to visit. I just want to travel, get around to see the universe, but not the way like we do here at Academy. Not like the other the Timelords with their hands on their backs standing behind their shields of sapphire, while the mandate of non-interference settles down and slowly turn into stone inside their minds. No, I would like to live life as it should be, with all the dangers, and joys and madness that it makes it exciting and unpredictable. I would like to really experience it, just like these humans experience life." His voice softened when his eyes met those of the Master.

"Would you join me?"

The offer took the Master by surprise. "What do you mean?"

"You and me, we could travel together to see the stars."

"You want me to run away from Gallifrey, with you."

The Doctor nodded. "You're my best friend in the whole-wide universe. Now where would I go without you?" The Doctor paused to study the Master's reaction, but it was difficult to deduce from him what he really thought of the idea.

"My father." The Master finally replied. "He would be devastated." A short silence fell between them before he continued with a touch of regret in his voice that betrayed his emotions. "I can't. My duties are here. On Gallifrey."

"Right." The Doctor's hearts suddenly felt numb and cold.

"I'm sorry." The Master muttered.

"No." The Doctor shook his head, realizing what it meant for this friendship that he held so dear. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I cannot stay."

They both remained standing in the open fields for a while, listening to the hopeful songs from the battered soldiers in the trenches. Both were wrestling with their own demons. The Doctor was guilt-ridden for having to leave his troubled friend behind, while the Master sank further away in darkness and loneliness.

By the time the Doctor finally ended the transmission, and they were back in the octagonal room, The Master had turned his feeling of loss and sadness into resentment, which sat like a hot pebble inside his stomach and shot poison at his hearts. The Doctor sensed his anger. Trying to calm him, he placed his hand on his shoulder, but the Master brushed it off and turned away. Only an hour before he had literally counted the days to his release from what he regarded as the prison that the Gallifreyian Academy represented, but now that idiot Doctor had spoiled even that for him. Now he actually dreaded the last of their school days together.

"Leave me alone." The Master rubbed in his eyes to avoid having to look at him. "I'll find my way back in the tower without you."

He sat down on the floor with his back against the crystal, resting his arms on his knees as he stared into the distance in silence.

The Doctor was hesitant to leave his friend. He waited, longing for a response, even if it was an outburst of anger, but none came. Finally, after an hour, he left.

The Master stayed in the transmission room till the early morning when the first orange beams of the twin suns burst into the high doomed-shaped windows. He watched with hooded eyes how the field of light travelled over the slate floor. It was only when it reached the tips of his worn shoes that he caught the spark from the tiny object, lying at his feet between the cobwebs and dust-balls. It glittered like the surface of a lake, shattering the incoming sunlight into a million shards that cut tiny slashes into the stone walls of the ancient chamber.

The Master picked it up. It was the damaged white point star that headmaster Redgrave had discarded from his rod. The minute breaks that left it useless and dangerous radiated in fine threads from its heart, making it look like a snowflake captured in the purest of diamonds. With his mind turning in a spiral that could only descend further into darkness, he wrapped his fingers around the flawed star, and let it slide inside his pockets before getting up and brushing the dust from his clothes.

5.

In the late afternoon the transmission room became crowded with pupils and tutors alike. Headmaster Redgrave's class prepared themselves for yet another expedition, this time to the quiet forests of Vastha Nerada. It was highly recommended in the briefing and the information brochure that they kept themselves away from the shadows.

Redgrave's pack appeared into the classroom like a group of wounded wolfs. Redgrave himself had healed well, with only a tiny dent in his nose bridge that reminded of yesterday's quarrel with the Master, but his pride had taken a severe punch. As soon as he set eyes on the Master and the Doctor, his eyes flashed with anger. Generally at this age, the brainstem was most of the time short-circuiting with the tongue, sending messages without passing the higher regions of the brain. But Redgrave's tongue had always been a remote organ that was operated separately from any higher planes of consciousness. In other words, the boy didn't know when to shut his stupid gob. He walked straight up to the two friends, who were sitting in the first row closest to the transmission crystal. The Master had put his feet up on the railing. His mood appeared to have calmed down after last night's trip, although he hadn't spoken a single word to the Doctor as yet.

"That's my seat." Redgrave demanded.

The Master shrugged indifferently. "Didn't smell your scent-mark on it. Maybe you pissed on a different chair."

There was a dangerous change in Redgrave's eyes. He shot a short glance over his shoulder to his father, who was still occupied with giving instructions to his pupils. Then he turned around and trashed the Master's right knee with a clenched fist.

"Stop it!" The Doctor yelled, but Ravenius wrapped his arm around his neck and covered his mouth to stop him from alarming anyone.

Redgrave loomed over the Master who kept a straight face despite of the pain.

"You and I have unfinished business to attend to." Redgrave whispered. "After this is over. We'll be waiting for you outside in the Graveyard fields. All three of us." He gestured to Bardson, who lashed out and hit the Master's knee a second time. He winced and gritted his teeth in pain, but his face quickly returned to the watchful coldness that was all that the Doctor saw of him ever since he was released from the tower this morning. Redgrave grinned. "Consider this as a taste of what is going to happen to you and the Nerd. Now get out of my chair."

Fearing that he would once again resolve to violence, the Doctor's hearts froze as the Master slowly rose from his seat with his both hands clenched into tight fists.

"Let him go." He said in a flat voice, devoid of emotions. "You want to trash me for what I did to you, that's fine. But he's got nothing to do with this."

Convinced that he had the upper hand, Redgrave's grin widened as he snapped his fingers to give a signal to Ravenius. His sidekick let go of the Doctor, who immediately sucked in a deep breath of air in relief.

Redgrave moved pass the Master who remained standing in his way like an old tree rooted to the spot. He deliberately bumped his elbow in his adversary's ribs. The impact made the Master reel back. He placed his hand on the bioprint to steady himself, but otherwise remained silent and apparently calm.

Redgrave sat down in the Master's seat and kicked back his feet. "We have a date then." Redgrave said. "Can't wait." His face was adorned with the most malicious grin as he moved his finger over his neck in a slash-throat gesture. The Master kept staring ahead and said nothing.

"Master." The Doctor tried, eager to get him away from Redgrave. "Come. Let's find some other seats." Knowing him better than he knew the backside of his own hands, he had at least expected some resistance, but to his amazement he followed him to the back rows.

"You don't need to go face those idiots." The Doctor looked at his friend worriedly as they sat down in the farthest ring of the transmission circle. "Just, be sensible for once and alarm the headmaster. I know you don't like him, but he's very strict and wouldn't hesitate to punish even his own kid if he ever did wrong…Master?"

No reply, only that cold, far-away look.

"I just don't want you to get into trouble again. And I don't want you to get hurt. I really don't."

A sarcastic smile suddenly split the calm on the Master's face.

"You don't need to worry about me. Last night, alone in the transmission chamber, I finally got the time to think. Like you said. I don't do it often enough. But now with the drums gone, and you..." He finally glanced at him. "You leaving, soon I will have all the silence and all the time in the world, just to think."

Something in the Master's response, the way the words passed his lips without any anger or resentment, without even the slightest touch of emotion, worried the Doctor deeply. He was about to question him further, when headmaster Redgrave moved to the middle of the transmission ring and thumped his rod on the floor three times to demand the attention of his pupils.

"We're ready for transmission. I want everyone to focus their minds and keep themselves out of their peer's transmission fields. We don't want that unfortunate accident with those Silverleaf and Famalarius boys to repeat itself. Now, connect."

The pupils placed their hands flat on the bioprint pad, leaning forward over the small diamond imbedded into the console to let the signal enter their heads.

The headmaster held the tip of his rod that contained the new white point star against the crystal monolith, transporting the vibrations inside the tiny diamond to the heart of the transmitter that immediately started to sing. The sound that was produced was much more powerful than it was last night, when it only had to transport two young renegade Timelords through the timevortex, whereas the current settings were adjusted and put on maximum to transfer an entire class to the far-away galaxy of Nerada Pulstra.

The amount of energy needed to transport something as complex as a conscious living being through time and space was the equivalent of the amount produced in the entire life-time of an average star. When sonic transmission was invented, the discoverer himself, an aging Timelord who had spend too many of his incarnations in the secluded world of his dusty laboratories, had deemed it achievable in theory but unworkable in practice, because the reaction was almost impossible to control. The wavelength and the amplitude of the vibration had to be just right to disrupt the atoms of the subject without destroying the blueprint of the physical shape so that these could be send out into the timevortex. At the assigned point of destination, these particles were then reassembled again, using the memory that was still locked inside these clouds of atoms. One flaw in the process, one corrupt link in the chain of transmitters, even one tiny scratch in the white point star that altered the wavelength for just one hundredth of a fraction would cause disruption in the signal that, once amplified a millionth time by the crystal, would end in disaster.

Redgrave hadn't noticed it, nor had the Doctor, but when the Master bumped into the biopad, he had the damaged diamond in his hand, and with a simple flick of the wrist like a trained magician, he had exchanged the star in the console with the flawed one.

It was the headmaster himself who was the first to be alarmed by the terrified cries that came from the front row. Redgrave was sitting straight up in his seat, his hands, thin and pale, were pressed flat against the biopad system like a pair squashed spiders. The blue light that burst from the white point star penetrated into his mind, but instead of initiating the transmission, it was causing havoc as it separated the atoms inside his every living cell with such violence that it destroyed the memory of the young Timelord's physical form. His mind was burning, and his body was falling apart. The headmaster, horrified by the sight of his suffering child, rushed over to the engines to shut it down. The biopads in front of the other pupils in the room aborted their transmissions immediately. Panic broke out when the others found out what was happening to the headmaster's son.

Meanwhile, the aftershocks that still came from the crystal monolith kept working out its gruesome effects on the paralyzed boy, whose body became translucent in violent flashes of energy outbursts, transforming his horrified, pain-struck face into that of a grinning skeleton. Bardson, who sat next to Redgrave, jumped up from his seat.

"Headmaster! Do something! Make it stop!" the boy yelled as if he was staring at his own nightmares.

Redgrave picked up his rod and slammed it against the crystal. He hit it again and again till his staff split in the middle and he finally realized that his desperate effort to save his son's life was of no avail.

The Doctor witnessed the ongoing catastrophe in shock and horror. The Master relaxed his shoulders and sat back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. His expression remained one of ice and stone.

"We have to help him!" The Doctor said, grabbing hold of his sonic screwdriver as he jumped out of his seat, but before he could rush towards the others, the headmaster's son uttered an agonizing scream as blue beams of light erupted from his mouth and eyes, destroying him from the inside. The trillion atoms that composed him finally became so far separated that they could no longer sustain the Timelord's form. With an eruption of blinding light that signified the release of his dying body's last remaining energy, the boy combusted, leaving behind a cloud of microscopic dust.

Screams of horror came from the other pupils. The Doctor saw how the mist of atoms that once was Redgrave junior drifted over the classroom. It was no more but a thin membrane of smoke that vaguely carried the outline of the young Timelord's face, a fracturing skull with frightened eyes and a wide opened mouth that screamed for mercy. As it reached the front of the windows, it quickly was dissolved by the cold currents of air entering from outside.

The headmaster, his mind struck by grief, sank down in front of his boy's seat, and swiped handfuls of dust in the palm of his shaking hand.

Longing to see no more, the Doctor turned to the Master, who still sat quietly in his seat, his eyes observing the sorrow of his teacher and fellow pupils with the indifferent rationality of someone who was studying a colony of bacteria under a microscope.

"This is unbelievable. Awful. Absolutely horrendous." The Doctor muttered, still in shock.

"Yeah, it was quite –" The Master paused to think of the right word. "Unexpected." He said.

The tiniest smile flashed over the Master's face. It was only a small upturn of the lips that came and went within a blink of an eye. Nothing more. Still the Doctor noticed it.

It was exactly in that moment that the gruesome realization of what had happened to Redgrave finally dawned on him.

_**TBC**_

_**As always, please review & comment.**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Four**

1.

The silence that hung like a shroud over the boy's dormitory was unusual for the time of the day. Normally, in the late afternoon, there would be a buzz of activity in the corridors surrounding the bedroom chambers, with the young Timelords chatting, playing or quarrelling their free hours between classes and supper away. Today however, was the first day of the four days of mourning over the death of young master Redgrave. His ash, or whatever could still be collected from it, was laid out in the chapel in the centre of the Citadel, resting on an altar surrounded by the stone faced statues of the founders of Gallifrey. A fobwatch was left by the remains. The time mechanism was stopped just after 12 o'clock, to symbolize that a young Timelord had passed before his time.

The Doctor sat alone in the dark in the dorm that he shared with the Master. He had closed the curtains to shut out the outside world, for he needed time alone to think.

There were other explanations, a hundred different things the Doctor could come up with that could have gone wrong and what would explain his peer's demise as a mere unfortunate accident. The diamond could have been old, sustained a crack or two before the energy surge that was needed to send the entire class on a fieldtrip hit it and made it shatter. Old master Azmael might have forgotten to check the biopads. He was nearing the end of his 13th regeneration, and had more than once lost his way in the schoolyard while trying to find the bathroom. It could have been the crystal monolith, the exceptional high number of students, the dodgy control system or even the position of the moons, the Doctor had considered them all, from the highly probably to the outright ridiculous. He needed to, or he would have gone completely mad by now. To think up alibis for the Master so he could _not_ be responsible for this was a difficult, and fanciful exercise, but it was the only way he could appease his mind.

And yet, he could not lose the feeling of dread that was threatening to overtake him.

A door slammed shut, shaking the Doctor out of his train of thoughts. He gazed up and saw the Master entering the room. Judging by the smile on his face, the bad mood that had plagued him yesterday had completely lifted. The Doctor found it quite unsettling.

"What are you doing here in the dark?" The Master's voice wasn't unpleasant. Compared to how he was yesterday, he actually sounded friendly. He threw a linen bag on his nightstand and hopped on his bed facing the Doctor. "You're not trying to out-gloom me are you?" He grinned.

"Where were you?" The Doctor hadn't seen the Master since he woke up this morning. "We held a service for Redgrave instead of the early classes. Everyone was there except for you."

"I didn't think I would be much missed." The Master shrugged with an air of indifference. "Considering my relationship with the deceased, I thought I better not show up at all." The Master searched in the bag and dangled a bottle of robinberry cider in front of the Doctor's nose. "However, I heard that the evening classes are also cancelled. So I sneaked into the larder behind the canteen and took a couple of these." He smiled cheekily, his eyes carrying that mischievous glint that the Doctor used to love about him. "I thought we might sneak out tonight you and I. We could go to the Graveyard fields and stretch out in the grass to look at the stars, just like old times."

The Doctor exhaled deeply and turned away from him.

"What's the matter? Don't you want to go?" The Master asked, finally noticing that there was something up. "I'll let you take me for a quick spin with your Tardis. Hell, we could even go visit _Earth_. I promise I won't be all negative about it this time. There must be something worthwhile on that rotating mud-ball that doesn't make me wanne puke."

He leaned towards the Doctor, noticing his distress, he frowned.

"Just cheer up, Theta. I hate to see you like this."

The Doctor swallowed a hard lump stuck inside his throat. He hadn't heard him use his old name for a very long time. His behaviour unnerved him. It made him sad to realize that the only time the Master was acting like his lucid, kind and cheerful old self was in a moment that was so inappropriate that it turned the normal into the grotesque. He dreaded it, but he couldn't keep making excuses for him any longer. "Master." He said, his lips and mouth dry and his hearts racing. "I want you to tell me, and I want you to be honest. Did you have anything to do with it?"

There was a short silence. The Master kept looking at the Doctor. Then a corner of his lips twisted into a grimace of a smile.

"What kind of question is that?" He answered, acting innocent. "Seriously, I don't know what you mean."

"Did you or did you not have something to do with Redgrave's death?" The Doctor's voice was still soft, but carried that angry, righteous tone that the Master absolutely despised. He turned around and put the bottle back on the stand. His hands were slightly trembling.

"Master. Answer me."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" The Master muttered, his irrational anger surfacing out of a swamp of hidden fear. "How dare you to accuse me? He wasn't exactly the most popular chap in our class. Why does it always have to be ME?!"

There was a short silence before the Doctor responded. "Because it could only be you, who would consider the possibility that someone actually _wanted_ Redgrave dead above that of an accident." His voice was rising as his desperation took the better of him. "It's only you who has that kind of murderous, insane mind! One that blows the cover before even it has started on making up a decent alibi!"

The Master kept down his anger as he leaned heavily with both hands on the nightstand. Why did everything have to be so difficult with him? Couldn't he just let it rest for once? He had only wanted to teach Redgrave a memorable lesson and hadn't expected the star to break and the annoying pupil to go poof and turn into nanodust in front of the entire class. He had an inkling of an idea what it could do of course, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered, but he had never imagined that it would be so final and so very _visual_. Still, in his opinion, it was more an accident than it was murder. Actually, he didn't really want to think about it anymore, let alone be reminded of it by the virtuous Doctor.

"I had nothing to do with it!" He replied in a firm voice in attempt to sound more convincing, and raised his hands up for the Doctor to see. "No blood on my hands!" He turned them in a theatrical display. "Not a drop of Redgrave's precious crimson. My hands are clean! There satisfied?"

The Doctor slowly shook his head.

"What?" The Master reacted as if he was insulted. "What do you need me to do to get that ridiculous idea out of your head? What more do you want me to prove?"

"I found this." The Doctor sounded broken and tired, his spirit crushed by the Master's stubbornness. He held out his right hand. On his palm lay the intact white point star that the Master had taken out of the biopad in exchange for the flawed one. The Doctor stared accusingly at him, waiting for his explanation.

"Where did you find this?" The Master asked, astonished.

"In your nightstand, the first drawer I opened. The thing is, I didn't really want to look. I didn't want to find anything. But my stupid, moronic brain just kept churning and wouldn't let it go. I saw how you reacted when Redgrave died, but I couldn't believe…so I thought, I'll just do a quick sweep on your side of the dorm. I was probably not goinh to find anything because I was not looking very hard. And that would have been fine.…Really…But you didn't even bother to hide it. Because you're not actually ashamed of it at all."

"Doctor," The Master was suddenly painfully aware of what the Doctor could do to him right now. "What are you going to do with that star?"

The Doctor bit on his lower lip. His eyes stung with angry tears. "Oh you are a marvel! You're incredible! First reaction, how to save your own hide! Not a scrap of guilt, not a tear of remorse, not even a pinch of self-doubt."

"You're not going to show it to the headmaster." The Master told him, while trying to appear calm, although inside, his nerves were close to span. "If he finds out, he's going to destroy me."

"Well, you should have thought of it earlier when you killed his son!"

The Master had enough. Reacting instinctively on anger and fear, he swirled around, took the bottle of cider, and threw it against the wall behind the Doctor's bed. It splintered in a hundred little pieces, leaving a stain of aortic crimson on the paint. The Master rushed over to the Doctor, and picked up the broken bottleneck, pointing the sharp edges at his friend.

"I won't let you do this!" The fear was now clearly visible in his eyes. Fear for being caught and punished. Fear for retribution, for being branded a disgrace and be treated like an outcast for the rest of his life. He grimaced and aimed the ragged end of the shard at the Doctor's face.

Doctor just stared at him, eyes unblinking, still carrying that righteous glint that condemned him for his crime.

His best friend looked at him as if he had gone mad.

He feared he actually had.

Finally realizing what he was doing and trying to calm down, the Master's voice softened,till he was no longer demanding, but pleading. "Doctor, I need that star. Hand it over to me."

Struck by a sense of hopelessness and grief, the Doctor shook his head, and cast his eyes on the wall with the blood-red stain to avoid him. Before the Master could threaten him again, he dropped the star on the ground, where it rolled away between the Doctor's feet. The Master immediately got down on his knees and scrambled over floor, searching frantically for the diamond between the dust and cobwebs under the bed. The Doctor watched him crawl on his hands and knees to get hold of the incriminating gem. His hearts felt heavy.

Without the Master noticing, he silently made his way to the door. With his hand resting on the handle, he turned around and gazed back at the Master one last time.

Despite what the Master's own paranoia had made him believe, the Doctor had never thought of showing the white point star to anyone.

It was only when the Master wrapped his fingers around the diamond, and heard the slamming of the dorm-room door behind his back, that he realized that the Doctor had left.

2.

The lake was at the bottom of a huge dune. The Doctor rushed down towards it, his feet slipping and sinking away fast in the ash, till it looked like he was falling down more than he was running. Neil and the rest of the gang were following closely. When the Doctor reached the more compact surface at the base of the dune, he took a few steps towards the shoreline of the lake, but stopped abruptly. The shard of the white point star that he held in his hand as a guide had changed its signal. Instead of the four drumbeats that he had heard faintly but clearly at the beginning, it now resonate a different sound. Instead of a clear rhythm, it was a more of a chaotic stampede. The Doctor swirled around on his heels, trying to retrieve the precious signal again when Neil bumped into his back.

"Doctor, why did we stop?"

"Sh!" The Doctor hushed.

Neil moved out of his way.

"Don't! Don't move a single step!"

The stampede quieted down, and the drums returned, just long enough for the Doctor to be pointed back towards the lake, before the chaotic bangs surged up again and complete drowned out the sound of the drums. It was at that moment that Will and Aurelia arrived at the base of the Dune.

"Hey, what's going on?" Will asked, while trying to catch his breath.

The Doctor let out a cry of irritation. "Stop! Will you just stop! Stop moving around!" He yelled, noticing the puzzled looks that Neil and the others gave him, he added. "I can't catch the signal when you move. The star is picking up too much noise. Must be the vibrations from our own footsteps. But why? Why now? It has never been that overly sensitive before." The Doctor rotated the diamond between his fingers as he reconsidered.

"What is he babbling about?" Aurelia commented. "What diamond? I though we were just running towards this lake. You don't need a frickin' signal to find this. It's right in front of our noses."

"Lake! It must be something to do with the lake!" The Doctor raked his fingers through his hair till it stood upright in crazy peaks. "Oh yes! That lake must be where the signal is from!"

He darted toward the silver shoreline, followed closely by the others who were by now completely bamboozled by the Doctor's strange behaviour.

"The lake, the lake is the source!" The Doctor yelled back. "That's why we were picking up the sound of our own footsteps!" He had reached the edge of the black beach. The Doctor halted abruptly with the tips of his sneakers almost touching the shiny surface of the lake. He fluttered his eyes when he realized what he saw.

Facing him was a smooth surface of blinding orange light that reflected the red sky as if it was a gigantic mirror, and stretched as far as the horizon. However, instead of water or any other liquid, the entire lake was composed out of diamonds so abundant in number that they were like grains of sand in a dessert. Each of them resonated the rhythm of the drums that the Doctor had followed, all the way from a different time and place of the universe.

Slowly, the very meaning of this discovery sunk in, and the Doctor rubbed his hand over his eyes as hopelessness and dread washed over him.

"God, is that what I think it is?" Neil whispered in amazement as he stared over the crystal surface.

Will picked up a gemstone from the shoreline and held it in his hand. "This is a diamond!" The young scientist stared at the many reflective facets as he turned it the little thing between his fingers. "This whole lake consists of diamonds!"

Neil had also picked one up and was closely studying it. He had never seen such a pure cut diamond in his life before. The number of facets counted more than a hundred, and the shape was almost perfectly round. "Doctor, These diamonds, there are not like the ones you find on the site of formation. They don't have the octahedral shape of rough diamond crystals."

"No."

"Someone cut these." Neil picked up a handful. "All of these. Filled an entire lake with it."

"They're called white point stars. They are very rare, and can only be found on one particular planet but nowhere else in the universe."

"You mean Pevogla?"

"Gallifrey."

Neil looked puzzled. The Doctor sighed and sat down in the black ash facing the lake.

"I've never heard of a planet called Gallifrey." Neil commented.

"It's because it was destroyed by a war. It no longer exists." The Doctor paused and frowned. "Or maybe it does, because this seems to be what is left of it."

"Hang on. I'm confused. You mean Pevogla used to be this Gallifrey?"

The Doctor looked up at the red sky, his eyes glazed. "It must be. The twin red giants of Pullox and Castor used to be the divine twin suns of Justice and Perseverance. These shifting dunes were once the red fertile hills of mount Perdition…and these ashes…" He swallowed. A tear glided down his face.

"Doctor…this is your planet, isn't?" Neil said, finally realizing what this was all about. "You're from Gallifrey, which means…"

"I'm not human. I may look like one, but I'm not. I'm a Timelord." He wiped the wetness from his cheek, and tried to put back on a brave face, but it was hard.

"And the others?"

"Turned into ash." His voice trembled. In his mind's eye he saw them standing in the corrupt immortality gate, seeking salvation from their doom. His right hand closed around the hilt of the revolver that in his nightmares continued to assist him in murder. One shot, and the link was broken, back they went into the Timewar. Back into hell. He saw the fury in Rassilon's eyes as he burned, and the look of sadness as she bowed and covered her face, the Doctor's weeping angel. And then the Master, his life-energy drained to the very last resort, but still pushing forward, sending the Lord President back into the void.

Gone.

All of them gone.

"Doctor?" Neil tried.

"We should leave." The Doctor rose up and brushed the ash from his clothes.

"Leave? But I thought you were looking for something? Didn't that star-diamond thing lead you the way?"

"Yes. No." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Look if you must know, I was looking for someone. A man like me. Another Timelord." He paused a beat as the heartache hit him. "That sound coming from the white point star, he used to hear it all the time. It drove him mad. I thought I could help. I thought I could still find him, just by following that sound. It brought me here all the way across the universe to this red planet on the edge of a blackhole. I had such hope." He bit on his lower lip. He didn't know why he was pouring his hearts out to these humans he barely knew, but he did.

"You don't know him, but that man could survive anything, came back even from the dead, twice." The small smile that had appeared on the Doctor's face faded again. "I thought he was here because of that sound. But it wasn't him. It's just this lake." He gazed over the placid surface. The reflected light of the late afternoon suns that scattered from the diamonds was almost blinding.

A trillion white point stars, still ringing out those cursed drums that Rassilon sent out into time and space to implant it into the Master's mind when he was still a child.

"The war is over and everything what was once Timelord is lost, but still they send out the signal, like an echo from past." The Doctor bowed his head. Caught up in misery, he dropped the diamond that had been his guide on the shoreline. He believed he had no longer use for it. Better to let it join the others.

"The man I seek is no longer here." He gazed back at Neil. "What I've found is the fading light of a long-dead star. My search is over."

"Aurelia, what are you doing?" Will shouted, breaking the silence between the two of them. They turned their heads and saw how the young girl was picking up handfuls of gemstones from the lake to put it inside her pockets.

"I'm just collecting samples for the lab. We might actually consider selling a couple of these to back up our research funding. These extraterrestrial diamonds could be worth a couple of million credits!"

"Hey! Put those back immediately! You can't take them with you!" The Doctor fumed, amazed and infuriated by the student's greed.

"What's wrong with taking them along?" Aurelia asked, deeply offended. That weird Doctor didn't need to shout at her, she wasn't deaf. "You had one with you when we arrived."

"Those diamonds are not like normal diamonds. They can capture any frequency of sound and amplify it a million times. Have enough of those on board of your spaceship and give them the wrong pitch, and every cell in your body could be ripped apart." The Doctor explained in an angered voice.

Better just to leave them where they are." Neil told Aurelia.

His colleague sighed and rolled her eyes. She took handfuls of diamonds out of her pockets and let the whole load plunge into the lake.

The loud sound of clattering crystals that erupted once they hit the surface was deafening enough to make the Doctor grimace and the rest of the group cover their ears.

The Doctor looked accusingly at Aurelia.

"Hey, you said I should put it back. This isn't my fault!"

"Put it back, that's what I said. Not throw it on a pile and make a hell of a lot of racket!"

His eardrums felt like splitting. The Doctor covered own his ears and gazed over the lake. The surface was no longer placid. "The whole lake is vibrating." His feet started to sink down into the ash.

"It's destabilizing the surrounding shoreline. We have to get away from here before the whole lake disappears below the surface!" The Doctor turned on his heels but noticed that the others weren't following. "Start running, NOW!" He yelled above the noise, and finally catching the group's attention. Following the Doctor, they headed for the higher parts of the dunes.

3.

"There are four of them. How can there be suddenly four of them? I only counted three. Three humans. What is the fourth one supposed to be?"

The Doctor raked through his hair in surprise and irritation. He was sitting behind his desk in his office. The old-fashioned telephone had been replaced by a primitive eighties model of a Mac computer. He was sick and tired of having to call the operating system every time that he needed access. Besides, the Master was still caught in the program, lost in own demonic version of LaLa land, so there was no use to keep up the exhausting pretence of running an Italian Asylum in the 1950s. He actually had turned off the rest of the simulation, just to be able to cope better with the crisis on hand.

The Doctor wasn't really fond of surprises. Peering into the monitor intensely, he followed the four dots of green that represented the intruders. One of them had just accidently triggered the diamonds and had reawakened the activation system. Soon, the Arc would rise from the bottom of the lake, and would be revealed to these humans plus one. Judging by his previous experiences, their reaction would not be the one that the Doctor preferred, although it would be nice for a change if they had enough sense to say, hang on, this is freakishly scary, let's just bugger off and leave this sinister Arc-thing alone.

But that was, of course, wishful thinking.

"Computer, did you scan the fourth trespasser?" He asked. He was really starting to regret that he had decided to save efforts on the construction of proper surveillance cameras. A green bleeping dot on a black screen wasn't much information and was leaving out a hell of a lot of detail. The female computer voice answered him diligently.

"Scanned intruder four for racial identity. None indentified."

The Doctor scratched the back of his head. This was rather unexpected. When he created the computer to assist him, he had fed information about every single existing race in the universe into her database. She should recognize them instantly by performing a simple body scan.

"Al-rrrright, what about where he comes from?"

"Planet of origin, planet 19911744AA, solar system of Castor and Pullox, Adratic constellation."

"Planet 1991174-, but that's here right around corner!" The Doctor cocked an eyebrow in absolute disbelief. "That's that tiny bare rock thing balancing on the skirt of the solar system. It only got one gas-station and a rusty service droid! He can't come from there!"

"Reconstruct path of intruder four…planet of origin, planet 19911744AA, solarsys-"

"Yes, yes, yes, I heard you already." The Doctor went through another session of extensive hair yanking. Alright, so he could not identify the fourth trespasser. When he thought of it, it was not really that important. Since the alien was hanging out with the human race, he could be sure that he wouldn't be any less insufferable nosy than they were. He just needed to intervene quickly, if only to prevent the ventilation system to become clogged up again with decomposing bits of human. The computer was already getting overheated trying to keep up with the Master's bumpy ride down memory lane. It didn't really need another excuse to blow up in the Doctor's face.

Speaking of whom….

"How's the status of program 110012?" He enquired.

"Program 110012 has been corrupted. Estimated success rate now less than 26,5%."

"How about the damage to the neurological pathways?" He asked with a heavy heart.

"Damage so far…calculating…."

The Doctor puffed a stray lock of hair out of face. Somehow, he knew that the upcoming results would gnaw on his mental health, much like how a hungry mongrel would chew on a leg.

"Damage so far…56,4% from previously existing neural pathways destroyed as compared to the readings from before initiation of program 110012."

- And he was wrong. It actually felt more like it was running him over with a massive truck. He sucked in a deep breath of air and tried to keep himself under control.

"Give me an estimate how much damage we would do if we pull him out now." It was not the most brilliant of ideas, he agreed, but he didn't feel like being any cleverer. He had done enough damage to the poor sod by being this stupendous clever already. Besides, he was too much caught in blind stinking panic to think of anything better at the moment.

"Estimated damage if program 110012 is abruptly terminated…an additional 12% as a result of cellular shock."

"Right…doesn't sound too bad…" He grimaced. Let's give that a try before he gets the chance to turn himself into a sad bed-vegetable. "Computer, terminate program 110012 immediately."

"Affirmative. Program aborting…"

A drop of sweat trickled down his neck as he waited. He noticed that the green dots on the screen had stopped moving. If he was correct, the intruders were standing halfway on the west dune. He crossed his fingers. Please let those idiots turn around and get the hell out of here. He had larger problems to deal with and he wasn't sure he would be able to do any damage control for the tress-passers' sake once the Master returned to the asylum.

It seemed to take forever for the computer to respond.

"And?" He asked again, rather agitated.

"Program termination…aborted."

"What?!"

"Program termination…aborted. Master overrides."

"Oh no…no, no, no, no…" The Doctor started typing frantically to activate the manual shutdown. "No, no, no, you DON'T!"

He hit the enter key. A green bar appeared with the message that program 110012 shutdown was initiated. The Doctor bit his nails as he watched how the bar crept over the screen like a snail on narcotics while the termination process proceeded.

18%

25%

65%

And then it became stuck for a very-_very_ long time.

"Come on!" The Doctor yelled, shaking the monitor with both hands. "Just another lousy 35%! Don't die on me now you piece of junk!"

The bar disappeared, and was replaced with what were currently the three most hated words in the Doctor's vocabulary.

PROGRAM SHUTDOWN TERMINATED

Followed by:

MASTER OVERRIDES

MASTER OVERRIDES

MASTER OVERRIDES

MASTER OVERRIDES

That last message repeated itself on and on, till it flowed down the screen in a green blur. The Doctor stared at the computer, numb and feeling rather defeated and vulnerable.

"Oh you poor, _stubborn_ idiot." He whispered, and covered his eyes.

4.

He sat on the bed. The Doctor's bed. In his hand he still held the star, the cold evidence of his crime. He wrapped his fingers around it and squeezed it so hard that the sharp edges cut tiny wounds in his skin. It helped him to regain focus.

He felt so numb and dead inside.

Why did he threaten him?

He had hated the Doctor. He had loathed him for his righteousness and his compassion for those who were so un-deserving of his sympathy. Why did he even care for what happened to Redgrave? That insufferable twat had tormented them both for years. If there was anything to be said in his defence, he could at least claim that he was evoked.

He had been poisoned by jealousy. Last night, when his dear friend had revealed to him his plans to leave this cold, regimental place in his precious Tardis, he had only felt betrayed and angry. Only the Doctor could so easily decide to head out into the universe without considering the consequences. His mom would be devastated, his family name would be ruined, and any bright future that was promised to him by those stuck-up Academic fart-heads would be flushed down the drains. But who would care about that? NOT the Doctor. He would rather play the renegade, the brave maverick Timelord, too busy cruising through space and _really experiencing_ life to care a bloody toss about anything, or anyone.

He was jealous of the Doctor, because he could not be like him. Too scared to become an outcast, he would rather wait and endure his promised apprenticeship in the House of Lords, and hope that under his father's guidance and support, he would rise above the others and secure himself a seat in the government. Then he would finally be heard. Then, he could take actions and change things for the better. Unlike the Doctor, he needed that bright idyllic future that was whispered into his ears by his teachers. Every single one of them he ever had, had claimed that he was brilliant, and was destined for greatness, capable to become one of the new generation of rulers of Gallifrey, if only…

There were other things that they whispered about him, but never to him, only to each-other and perhaps to his father, if they dared.

Madness. Afflicted. Damaged.

He ran his hands through his shortly cropped hear, sucking in a deep breath of air.

Empty dreams. A fool's fantasies of success, power and acceptance.

Once, a long time ago, he had found himself in this situation, sitting exactly like this in his darkened bedroom. With the doctor gone after the argument, his mind was easily flooded with dark thoughts. But then he had not been alone. The drums had been there, feeding his insanity, telling him he was right to act in his own interest. It was only self-defence. The doctor would have ruined him. The Doctor wasn't his friend, but his adversary, and he should be cautious.

There was no end to the paranoia that those four taps could evoke.

But now the drums were gone. His mind was silent. And for the first time since he remembered his last days at the Academy, he could reason clearly, and reflect on his actions.

He realized that he had been wrong about the doctor.

He actually knew, when he looked into his eyes, that he wouldn't have done it. He would never have given him up to the headmaster. Not the Doctor. Not Theta.

He loved him too much.

And what did he do with that love?

He had ripped it out of him with a bloodstained star, threw it on the floor in ridicule, and stamped on it with his destructive anger. He had done everything to kill his love and destroy their friendship, and perhaps….he had succeeded.

He closed his eyes in misery. Without the drums, he was victim of his own conscience, something he didn't believe he still had. At least he hadn't heard from the bastard for some time now. He thought he had killed it years ago. But here it was, banging at the door like a tax collector, demanding at least an attempt or two at redemption from the Master's side before it would even consider leaving him alone.

What had he done?

He needed to talk to the Doctor.

He would finally tell him the truth. That he was sorry and that he was afraid. Scared to death that he had finally lost his mind. He needed him. He needed him to stay sane. Jumping up from the cot, he rushed to the door.

He would promise to do anything, even if it meant that he had to go the headmaster and admit to his crime, if only he would forgive him.

There were only two people in this entire universe who meant anything to the Master. The first one was his father, and the second one was his childhood friend. Without them, he would just be lost in a world of beings to which he felt no connection, and no mercy. Losing one of them was like loosing his final grips on humanity.

Outside in the corridor, he stopped and closed his eyes to focus on the Doctor's scent. He picked up the smell immediately. It led in the direction of the west gate, where behind the tall walls of the citadel and beyond the red grasslands, was the wilderness of the graveyard fields. His eyes fluttered open, and with heavy hearts, he followed the Doctor's trail.

_**TBC**_

_**Meanwhile, please review and comment on the story sofar, it helps me to keep my interest in writing the whole thing down.  
**_


	6. Chapter 6

5.

His hearts were racing. Jumping over obstacles and dodging trees, his feet couldn't carry him fast enough. He pushed through the tall field of wild red grass, ignoring the sweeping branches of thorn-bushes that stung his hands and face. Although it had been lifetimes ago, he still remembered the exact location of the derelict Tardis that he had discovered together with the Doctor when they were still in the Academy.

And the Doctor's scent was leading him right to it.

He stopped running when he was only a few meters away from the Doctor's Tardis. The time machine had been lovingly restored and was almost unrecognizable. Had the original camouflage unit once made it appear like a grandfather's clock, complete with a rusted clockface and a tiny doorway through which you could barely squeeze inside, now it had been converted into a blue wooden Police box. The Master recognized the strange human artefact that was a familiar sight in the streets in a country called England on the Doctor's favourite pet planet. The two small glass panels in the door glowed with the light of the working Tardis core inside.

The Master, realizing that the Doctor had activated it for a reason, darted forward and pulled on the door handles. The door was locked.

"Doctor!" He screamed. "Open the door. We must talk!"

He slammed his fists on the Tardis, but the Doctor didn't answer him.

"Please! Open it! Let me in! Doctor! Let me explain! It's different now. Everything is different. Doctor, please, open the door!"

A shadow appeared in front of the two tiny windows and he stopped banging. His fists were getting painful and swollen.

"Doctor?"

Placing his hands flat on the surface, he leaned his head forward till it touched the wood. He could sense his friend's presence at the other side. In his hearts he could feel his grief.

"Doctor! Let me in!" He cried, his eyes stinging with tears. "I've changed my mind. I don't care about my father's seat in the House of Lords. I don't care what they think anymore! Please. I want to go with you! Take me with you to Earth or whatever stupid backwater place you want to go. Just…don't leave me here on my own..."

When the Doctor finally answered him it was with a voice that was filled with regret.

"I can't. If I do, I would just keep on making excuses…because you'll never…"

A pause. He could hear the Doctor swallow his tears away as he continued.

"Master, for my own sanity's sake, I just can't. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but I'm not strong enough."

"Please, don't." The Master breathed. "Don't leave. I'll go mad…"

"Master, I'm so sorry."

With a whizzing sound the Tardis activated, creating a private whirlwind that sucked up dead leaves and stalks of dry grass into the sky. The Master clenched his hands and started once again bashing his fists on the wooden panels. "Doctor!" He yelled hard as he tried to carry his voice above the noise of the vanishing machine.

"DOCTOR!!!"

But it was of no avail. The Tardis dematerialized in front of his eyes, leaving behind only a vacant spot where the grass was flattened. When the Tardis had completely disappeared, the dead leaves and grass blades gently drifted back down again, falling onto the Master and the square pattern in the grass.

Then the sound of the engine finally faded away into silence.

The Doctor was gone.

The Master was alone.

"YOU COWARD!" He yelled, as his reason was swept away by the rage that seeped back into his bones. "You bloody COWARD!!!"

Throwing back his head, he screamed all of his pain into the sky, as if his cries could be carried all the way up for the Doctor to hear.

He screamed till his voice was raw, and his tears had finally dried up in the wind. He sunk through his knees and sat down in the grass, lost and frightened, he buried his face behind his hands.

"Master!"

He gazed up with tired, red-rimmed eyes. Someone was calling him.

"Hey! Oakdown!"

Before he could turn to look, something sharp and heavy hit him at the back of his head. The impact knocked him forward and sent his head spinning. He grasped the wet patch of hair on the back of skull. His fingers returned red and sticky with his own blood.

Another rock hit him on his shoulder, sending out a shock of pain into his system. He crawled up and looked back over the fields. Two lonely figures that he recognized as Ravenius and Bardson were approaching over the hill. They were throwing rocks at him, but this was not one of their ordinary bully exercise, the two of them were picking up large stones and were aiming at his head to do some serious damage.

"Oakdown, you freak!" Ravenius yelled, cupping his mouth with both his hands. "We know what you did to Redgrave! You were messing with the panels! We know it was you, even if the headmaster doesn't believe us. You killed him, you FREAK!"

The Master glared angrily at the two brutes. Raising his chin and cracking his knuckles in anticipation, he awaited them, as if somehow retaliation on these two could appease his anger and sorrow.

"I don't know what you two idiots are babbling about." The Master's voice sounded low and dangerous. "Redgrave wanted to have a first row seat. It wasn't my fault that he got barbequed." A cruel smile appeared on his face, his eyes darted from one bully to the other. "Good riddance, though. That arrogant twat didn't deserve any better than what happened to him. And you should have seen the look on your faces. It was hilarious. Pure yellow chicken."

"You little shit!" Bardson roared, and swung his fists at him, but instead of making contact with the other student's cheekbones, the bully hit nothing but air as the Master ducked down and bashed his head into the larger pupil's stomach, sending him falling backwards. Having straddled Bardson with his weight, the Master spat in his face and hit him hard at the side of his head to send his ears ringing and leaving him too disorientated to crawl back up. Then he aimed for the liver to do the real damage. Everything went satisfactory, till the Master experienced a sudden explosion of pain, red and searing, cutting through his right shoulder blade. He gasped. From the corner of his eyesight he saw a blast of light going off from a small object that Ravenius held in his hand.

Time to run.

He rolled away from Bardson and into the cover of grass and thorn-bushes. It was only a second later that the second blast exploded in front of his feet.

He started running.

"Run you yellow piece of shit!" Ravenius shouted after him. "Run as far as you can! We're still gonna find you!"

He didn't know where he was going, stumbling over his own feet, he headed for the thick woodland that he saw at his right. It wasn't that he was too afraid to fight. This was an entire different ballgame. What Ravenius held in his hand was a weapon, something created with the purpose to kill, which was a concept that was still beyond the comprehension of a Timelord at that time, but wasn't such a difficult thing to grasp for the Master. So the kid hated him so much that he had created the first handheld-weapon in Timelord history to dispose of him.

How fucking charming.

And the most frightening part was that the bloody thing seemed to work as well. He didn't need to inspect his wounds to know that a red angry slash of burnt flesh ran from the back of his shoulder to the front, and that two of his tendons were severed. He certainly didn't want to wait till Ravenius had done some much-needed practice and had developed a better aim.

Another blast hit the ground at his right. He ducked his head and dived into the shrubs at the edge of the woods. He ran into the thick forest. His feet slipping over the wet layer of decaying leaves that were no longer silver or red, but black and slick like oil. An army of twigs snapped back in his face as he pushed through the undergrowth.

"Oakdown! Where are you! Come out you coward!"

"Oakdown, you freak! Come and get what you deserve!"

He stumbled over a tangle of roots and slipped into a ditch, his body sliding down beyond his control till he splashed into a muddy stream at the bottom. The plunge made enough noise to alarm his persecutors.

"Oakdown?"

Panting of exhaustion, he pressed his face flat against the dirt. His hearts rattled loudly in his ears.

"Where are you, you freak?!"

Footsteps and the sound of breaking twigs. His eyes followed the shadows, they were standing right above him.

"Shit! Where the hell did that freak go now?" He recognized Ravenius' voice.

"I don't know. I was hardly looking, I was just following you." Bardson babbled.

"Brilliant. Now what?"

"Hang on. What's that?" There was a pause, followed by footsteps coming closer to the edge of the ditch. "It shimmers. Wait, that looks like…"

The Master's hearts skipped a beat. Frantically, he inspected his pockets, but found that they were empty.

"That's a white point star!" Bardson gasped.

The Master closed his eyes and dug his nails inside the palm of his hand till they drew blood. How could he be so bloody _stupid_ and so _clumsy_?!

"That shape. It's cut to fit the biopads in the transmission room." A longer pause followed as Ravenius thought it all through. "That's it." He mumbled. "The sick bastard must have switched this for a defunct one on Redgrave's seat!"

"And he dropped it when he was running away from us. But, then we finally have evidence!" Bradson remarked.

"Oh yeah, my friend, we certainly do. Enough to nail that sucker to the wall and watch him bleed. Come, we have go back and show it to the headmaster immediately."

"What about Oakdown? He's still somewhere in the woods."

"Let the elders deal with him later. They can hurt him in more ways than we can."

That message certainly shook the Master awake. Fear and anxiety rushed through his body, urging him to act. He looked up at the shadows of the two fiends. The bulky one must the Bardson. He needed to take down the other first. Like a scorpion in its hole, he waited till Ravenius was close enough to the edge before he grabbed his boot and pulled him down into the ditch with all his might. Ravenius slid down on his back into the mud stream, where the Master was just waiting to give him a bloody welcome. He hit the other boy on the side of his head, swirled him around and banged his forehead repeatedly against the exposed root system of a giant tree till his arms and legs went limb.

"Ravenius!" Bardson yelled down, and tried to find his friend in the darkness of the ditch. He caught sight of the Master. "Oakdown!" He roared. "Let him go!"

The Master ignored his threats. He had been searching for the incriminating diamond, but couldn't find it on Ravenius. However, he found the weapon the bully had used to injure him. It was a gun of some sort, shaped like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. How original, the Master thought not without sarcasm. He had always known that Ravenius wasn't really the genius inventor that his teachers claimed him to be. The bastard was an idea-stealing fraud, whose motto was that it always was easier to copy than to create. However, one short sweep over the controls made it clear to the Master that instead of affecting sound, Ravenius' device was using the properties of light to inflict the damage. He activated the laserscrewdriver, and pointed it at the boy's head.

"Where is the star?" He hissed with a savage look on his face.

Ravenius' eyes widened in fear.

"Where is it?" He pressed the tip of the laserscrewdriver on his left eyeball, making his squirm.

"Bardson has it." He yelped.

Bardson had jumped down into the ditch and was suddenly standing behind the Master. He clutched a handful of the Master's hair and pulled back his head, and quickly followed with a tree trunk-like arm that he wrapped around his victim's throat.

Choking to death, the Master struggled to free himself. Meanwhile, Bardson's meaty left hand let go of his hair and went for the laserscrewdriver. The master lifted it up, and clumsily, he managed to press in the fire-button. The red blast that erupted burnt off a section of his left eyebrow and incinerated Bradson's eye with a distinctive popping sound as the eyechamber cooked and burst under the intense heat. The bully let go of him and the Master staggered back, clutching onto his throat as he tried to refill his lungs with much-needed oxygen.

Watching Bradson as he rolled over the muddy forest floor in pain while he cried over his ruined eye with as much interest as he would have for observing his laundry entering the spin-cycle, the Master wiped the blood from the head wound at the back of his neck, and sat down besides the cowering Ravenius.

He clapped his hands. "So, where were we?" As if he was just continuing a friendly, casual conversation. "Ah, I know, I was aiming this at your eyeballs, and I wanted to know where my star was, before I was so rudely interrupted. You said Cyclops over there has it?" A demented smile crept over his face.

"You are a monster." Ravenius whispered fearfully. "You are truly insa-"

The Master whacked him on the head savagely.

He strode over to his wallowing mate. Crouching down beside him, he grab hold of his hair to stop his head from turning away and aimed the laserpoint at his one remaining good eye. The smile appeared again, emotionless and crazy.

"Now, tell me. Do you want to know how it feels to stagger around in darkness for the rest of your life, or do you want to enlighten me about where I can find my precious star?"

Bradson immediately took it out of his pocket and handed it over to him. His hand was trembling.

"Good boy." He muttered. For a moment his attention was caught by the little star that he slowly turned between his fingers.

"That so much grief could be caused by such a small little thing." He sighed bitterly. "We are but the stars' tennisballs, struck and bounded, which way they please them."

"You know, when I first came here I thought this was part of the program. The Doctor has his curious ways of trying to cure me." He turned and gazed at Ravenius. "Not the one that you know, the nerdy Doctor who was too much of a coward to deal with me and who ran away. He's probably twirling around his pet planet right now, farting rainbows and holding hands with vulgar female Earthlings as he goes. No I mean the Doctor who takes care of me, the one with the numbers and calculations." He frowned, getting confused by his own words. "It didn't exactly go as expected. To be honest. I think I went crazy again and screwed it up for him massively. I think I might have burnt a fuse or two." He laughed almost apologetically.

Ravenius looked at the Master as if he was facing a madman holding a gun, which was of course not far from true.

"It's those pesky drums!" He pointed at his head with his index fingers. "Those cursed, unreliable drums! They are the ones to blame! I can't hear them. Everywhere I go, it stays so awfully quiet. I thought I could find them if just I listen. I followed it all the way back here, to my final days on Gallifrey." He bit on his lower lip, sweeping angrily with his arms. "And what do I find? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even a tiny little tap for trying! The only things I found were these bothersome memories that were better forgotten than remembered." He snorted. "Redgrave, and that human stain of a tramp I ate for Christmas." He shook his head. "And every time it goes wrong, he's there, in one form or another. He's there, all righteous and noble and judging." He glanced over at Ravenius, the corners of his mouth turned down in misery.

"He's a hypocrite, you know. The Doctor. He really is. He thinks I'm mad like the rest of you, but he never says it. He never calls me mad right into my face. He doesn't have the heart to do so." He glanced down at the laserscrewdriver that he held in his hand, fiddling with it absentmindedly. "Come to think of it, that actually makes him worse than the whole lot of you. I hate hypocrites."

"Uhm…Maybe you two should get together and talk." Ravenius tried, sensing that perhaps the Doctor was the only one who could still talk some sense into him.

"You weren't exactly listening, were you?" The Master snorted. "He's gone. Took his sanctimonious-self right off the face of this stinking planet in a second hand Tardis. There is no-one left here to stop me." He paused. Ravenius noticed that the star had suddenly disappeared. The only thing left in the Master's hands was the laserscrewdriver. The tip of the laserpoint looked different, strangely bulky.

"But maybe there was a purpose in all of this." The Master mused.

"Please, you don't need to do this." Ravenius pleaded.

"Hush! Let me think….Oh what if…What if I was suppose to _create_ my own drums?"

Ravenius shook his head in confusion.

The Master's mad smile returned, and it brought cold shivers down Ravenius' spine.

"The drums, they were like the absolute opposite of my conscience, the flipside of my remorse. They rang so loud, that I couldn't hear anything-else. But if you dissect them, those sounds, that repetitive four beat rhythm that silenced my reason so efficiently, what were they more than rage, a sense of self-preservation, and bloodlust." He shivered, exhilarated by the idea, he stared at the terrified pupil who immediately understood where he was going to.

"No! Please! Don't!"

"Everyone can count to four. I don't think I need the drums to remind me of what I can do." He laughed. "Let me see. One was the tramp in the desolated wasteland, back on Earth." He rose slowly and twisted the weapon, the now improved laserscrewdriver in which the transmission star was incorporated at the tip. The device came back to life and made a low threatening humming noise as high volts of electricity charged through the wires.

"Two was of course, the headmaster's insufferable son."

He strode forward, aiming the laserpoint at Ravenius who crawled away from him while he kept weeping and begging for his life.

"Please. Please. I won't tell anyone. Please don't!"

"That's not the point." He shook his head in disappointed, and stared at the frightened young man with a determined and angry look in his eyes. "Don't you get it?! You are number three. There is always a number three!"

He fired. A blast of pure energy hit Ravenius between the eyes. The boy had just enough time to open his mouth in shock, but before he could even utter a scream, he combusted into a cloud of ashes. The Master closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed in the tiny particles of Ravenius that still drifted in the air.

Then he turned around. His face was cold and expressionless.

"Which makes you number four." Aiming the laserscrewdriver at the next victim.

But there was no-one there facing him on the forestfloor of the muddy riverbank. Bardson was gone. A trail of clumsy footprints showed where he struggled up the side to get out of the ditch. The Master closed his eyes again and sniffed the air like a bloodhound. He eyes flew open when he picked up the scent, and climbed out of the trench in pursuit of the last member of Redgrave's gang.

6.

Standing where the Doctor considered to be a safe distance from the diamond-lake, the group of young scientists looked down and watched how the amplified vibrations created a shockwave over the surface of the lake. It started from the centre, as if someone had dropped a giant pebble in the middle, and spread in concentric rings to the side, becoming bigger and bigger as they reached the shores, before slamming onto the black beach in violent waves.

Neil whistled between his teeth. "Damn, a diamond tsunami. Now I've seen everything."

"Hardly." The Doctor sighed. "Look, let's head back to the cruiser. Shall we?"

"Why?" Aurelia asked. "It seems like the worst is over. If we wait a little longer it would probably be safe to go back down again."

"We're not going back down! There's nothing to go back for, especially for you!" He pointed accusingly at her.

"Speak for yourself. You don't want me to touch the diamonds, that's fine, but we still got data to collect." Aurelia responded agitatedly.

"Well that's tough, but we are leaving, right now!"

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but Aurelia has a point." Neil tried. "We can't leave without taking some samples. I'm sorry for your lost, I really am. But I don't think you're reacting rationally. There is no harm in staying on Pevo-" He corrected himself. " I mean Gallifrey, if we keep in mind not to disturb the lake that is. We want to gather enough data on the planet before we return, or this entire expedition would be futile."

The Doctor shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "Oh Neil, not you! Aurelia I could quite understand, but you should be more sensible!"

He gazed up and looked for Will who stood away separated from the group.

"How about you Will, do you want to stay?" The Doctor walked over to the young scientist. His attention was seemingly caught by something that he had spotted in the lake.

"Will?" The Doctor snapped his fingers right in front of his eyes. "Station one calling station two, anyone home? Or did you just leave the lights on?"

"Huh, oh I am sorry Doctor." Will turned to him, but his eyes darted from the Timelord back down on the lake again.

"Will, do you know what they say about staring too long in the sun?" The Doctor asked, slightly worried. "It is supposedly bad for you. The same is true for a diamond lake. Don't look at it too long. It could cause dessert blindness, ever heard of that?"

"It's not that." Will shielded his eyes from the blinding light from the twin suns. "There's something down there. Right in the middle of the lake where the ripples first appeared. It's something dark and tall. There, can you see it Doctor?" He pointed it out. The Doctor squinted his eyes against the light and followed Will's index finger. There, right in the centre of the lake stood a black tower. The roof of the strange building stuck like a mummified hand out of the dessert of diamonds.

Will turned to the Doctor. "It's real isn't it? It's not one of those Fata Morganas, right?"

"You didn't dream it up. It's real alright." The Doctor answered, a puzzled look on his face.

"But it wasn't there when we were down at the beach." Neil commented. "At least I didn't notice it."

"It must have been raised up from the beneath the surface of the lake by the vibrations." The Doctor explained. He did what Will had done just before and covered his eyes from the blinding twin suns to take a better look.

The Doctor's hearts suddenly picked up pace. He recognized the symbol in the spandrels above the entrance of the tower. It was a succession of intersecting rings, representing the orbits of the planets that crossed their paths with Gallifrey.

The symbol of the Timelords.

"Change of plans." The Doctor yelled back as he rushed down the dunes in long impatient strides. "We're going back down!"

"And now it's suddenly okay to go run right back to the lake!" Aurelia nagged. "Really, how selfish can that man be!"

"Just be glad he wants to stay! With the Doctor around, I got a feeling that we're gonna see even more mind-boggling stuff." Neil smiled, and ran after the Doctor.

7.

They actually had to wait till the last of the waves had died down. Meanwhile, the Doctor decided to use the mini-terrain cruiser that was onboard of the ship to carry them across. The thing looked like a rubber raft that hovered 30 to 40 centimetres above the ground, which was good enough for the short trip as long as the Doctor steered them away from the highest ripples left behind by the diamond tsunami. The only drawback was that the original design was too noisy, and would trigger yet another storm over the lake. To solve this, the Doctor silenced the exhaust system using Aurelia's hairdryer (under loud protest), and put a noise-dampener in the pipes using Aurelia's panties (handed over to him in much discontent). The Timelord didn't care much about the girl's constant nagging for the entire duration of the trip, but was still relieved that it luckily proved to be mercifully short.

Closer by, the tower looked like a folly, one of those strange architectural structures that were created pure for aesthetics but had no function, commonly commissioned by rich humans with too much money and too little common sense. It was a black octagon of only two stories in height. The roof was pointed and sharp as if it was designed to pierce a hole in the sky. Four sentinels adorned the upper level, each of them looking like a miniature version of the tower itself. The entrance of two massive wooden doors were completely blown out of portion, and covered the entire west wall from top to bottom. There were no windows. The Doctor steered the raft drift just in front of the closed doors.

"What is this?" Neil asked, noticing the strange symbols carved in the wood.

"It's a language, an ancient one, brought to Galligrey by the first Timelords in existence." The Doctor said, amazed. "The druids and soothsayers on my home-planet used it for conducting ceremonies and for casting their predictions. The rest of us barely used it. Most of us couldn't even read it."

"How about you Doctor. Can you read it?"

The Doctor licked his lips and put his black-rimmed glasses on. Starting from the top, he deciphered the ancient scribbles and translated them to his human companions. "Inside these labyrinth walls. Here sleeps the nightmare child who lies alone. When the darkness falls, his dreams draw monsters out of these cursed stones."

"Very nice." Will gulped.

"There is more." The Doctor continued. Fascinated by the inscription, his mind was turning fast to process the information. "For we have made his prison be, every step away from the. This child they would destroy, if you tried to set him free."

"What does this mean?" Neil furrowed his brows and looked at the Doctor for an explanation. It was happening quite a lot ever since they met him.

"I'm not sure."

"You don't know?"

The Doctor pinched his nose bridge. "It sounds like the tower is some sort of prison. One created by the elders. Hence these soothsayers' scribbles on the doors. The inscriptions function as a warning for those who want to enter."

"Oh! Like those you find in the entrance of the tombs of the Pharaohs." Will said.

"Yeah, well. A bit like that." The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. "Only this isn't a tomb, and the thing kept inside this tower isn't dead."

"The nightmare child." Neil opted.

The Doctor nodded solemnly.

"But who is the nightmare child?"

"Well, I've got a vague inkling who it could be." He muttered. He considered the possibility, but quickly dispatched of the idea. To his rational mind, it seemed just too downright ridiculous, too impossible to be possible. And yet…there was still this tiny bit of hope that he refused to let go.

"But if this tower is cursed by your people, is it safe enough to enter?"

"Nah, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Despite of our enlightenment and profound knowledge of science, space and time, about anything really, the Timelords were in fact, quite a superstitious bunch. Although they would never admit it of course. What I mean to say is that you don't need to worry about a curse. Actually, there are no such things as curses."

"What about the one who killed lord Carnarvon who discovered the tomb of Tutankahmun?" Will opted.

"Blood poisoning after an insect bite." The Doctor answered. He took out his sonic screwdriver and went with it over the hinges and the lock of the double doors.

"Arthur Simmons who excavated the secret burial grounds of the Judoons?"

"Killed by a Judoon who didn't like it that the man was digging up his grandpa." He didn't look up from his work. The locks that sealed the double doors were very old, and had suffered of extreme corrosion with the mechanism inside rusted into one solid clump of metal. He needed to re-adjust the wavelength of his sonicscrewdriver to get it to turn.

"Lady Morgiana la Fey."

"Stepped on a booby trap."

"Doctor Wellington the third."

"Opened a grave that was covered by flower garlands, and the man happened to be extremely allergic to pollen grains."

"He sneezed to death?" Will asked I disbelief.

"Swollen air-pipe. I mean massive. Wasn't exactly a nice way to go." He whizzed the sonicscrewdriver over the lock for a moment till a heavy click of the mechanism inside could be heard. Then heavy doors slowly opened to the outside.

The Doctor steered the graft in front of the short flight of stairs that lead up to the entrance. Then he hoped on the stone steps and entered without so much as a moment of hesitation. The rest of the gang peered anxiously into the darkness behind the doorway, then they decided, what the heck, and followed the Timelord inside.

The first thing that the Doctor noticed was something-else entirely than what draw the attention of his human companions. He heard the others gasp, but he was used to buildings that were bigger in the inside. In fact he would had been very disappointed if it had turned out that it wasn't, considering that the architects of the tower were his people. The second thing the eye was drawn to, was the staircase that winded close to the walls, spiralling up towards to the sky like a giant stone snake reaching out to infinity. The ceiling itself was so far away, that it was almost invisible, disappearing in a haze that could be a gathering of clouds, or just dust that was trapped in the stagnant air. The first thing he noticed was the giant clockwork in the middle of the tower that was incorporated into the marble floor in a large circle. The system of rotating gears turned the two rusty handles that found their way in jolted motions, like two ancient grannies trying to remember how to walk. Time had not been kind to them.

"It's a lock." The Doctor said.

"What do you mean, a lock? It's a clock, right?" Will asked, but before the Doctor could answer him, the two old handles pointed out 12 o' clock and activated a mechanism that was hidden underneath the floor. The gang was startled by a loud bang when the doors swept shut behind their backs.

Will turned to the Doctor, his face pale.

"Like I said. It's a lock." The Doctor answered. "The real one. The one that was created to keep the prisoner in the tower. The other one on the doors was just a trap for meddling nosy buggers like us who happen to pass by."

"Oh my God! How do we get out?" Aurelia's voice was close to panic-mode.

"We don't. Not until we find the nightmare child and free him from his prison. At least, that is what the inscription says."

"But that's just a whole bunch of superstitious gibberish." Aurelia objected. "You said so yourself!"

"Only the concept of a curse is absolute nonsense. You could still make a very handsome and rather effective booby trap with everything that modern science has to offer, I can assure you that."

"So, if we do have to follow the inscriptions, where do we find this nightmare child?" Neil asked.

The Doctor gazed up at the endless staircase. "I think we are suppose to go up, don't you? There's hardly any other option."

After a short consideration, Neil and the others agreed.

"Up it is then." The Doctor grinned and put his hands inside his pockets as he stared up at where the ceiling disappeared into perpetuity.

"But the question is, how far do we need to go up?"

8.

The suns had already set well behind the horizon, leaving the woodlands to be swallowed by the tall shadows of the trees. Open patches in the roof of dark branches revealed a moonless, darkblue sky.

Stalking like a cat in this night-version of the forest, the Master was still hunting.

Up his prey went, crashing through the bushes that covered most of the hillside where the woods became denser and the trees older. Still the Master could track him down without much effort. To him, the stench of fear was so easily to detect.

"Oh Bardson." He called in a sing-song voice. "Where are you, you mindless brute?! Come and meet your Master."

A branch swept back at his right. He turned and just saw a shadow disappear behind the row of pine trees. He smirked and lazily flipped the laserscrewdriver in the air before catching it in his hand.

"One!" He shot the laser at the pine closest to his target, letting it burst into flames. A scream came from Bardson, who appeared from behind his cover in panic.

"Two!" The Master laughed manically, and shot the pine tree at Bardson's right, sending the terrified young man fleeing in the opposite direction.

"And three!" He aimed at a thorn-bush at his left, and the frantic Timelord ran to the right again where he tripped over an upturned root. He fell against the burning tree trunk where his coat immediately caught fire.

"Fou- Oh no, that no good!" The Master said in a disappointed voice. "You were supposed to zig-zag, not set yourself on fire, you clumsy ape. What's the bloody fun in that?!"

The burning fabric of the coat was sticking on Bardson's arms and chest, roasting his skin. "HELP ME!" He yelled. "HELP ME, PLEASE!!"

The Master strode calmly towards him. He gazed at the struggling pupil with an air of indifference. "Oh… don't say anything…I remember this." He bit on the tip of the laserscrewdriver. "Oh yeah, miss Leuvenzahn's first-aid classes." He grinned sadistically, and made a circular motion with his index finger. "In a situation like this, you're supposed to roll over the ground to put out the flames."

Bardson screamed in pain and frustration and lashed out to the Master, eager to take him down with him. But the Master's reflex were quicker than a ray of light, and he simply jumped out of Bardson's reach. Unmoved by the assault, he rolled his head over his shoulder, making his neck crack.

"Here, let me help." He said coldly, and kicked Bardson hard in his back, sending him rolling down the hillside. He burst in maniacal laughter as he watched how the pupil whirled down like a wriggling, flaming ball, leaving behind a trail of burning weed, till it crashed into a tree trunk and came to an abrupt halt.

His laughter slowly died away. Enough of this tedious cat and mouse game. Time to make a proper killing.

He went down the hillside, throwing the laserscrewdriver up in the air and catching it with his left, than his right hand. A cruel, ferocious glint burned in his eyes.

He aimed the laser at Bardson's head, ready to take him out of his misery. In some twisted way, he actually thought he was doing the damned fool a favour.

"Stop!!"

Startled, the Master look further down and saw a large group of men appearing out of the shadows of the woods. The long robes and the wands they carried indentified them as the elders from the Academy. A large number of students had also joined the search-party. They carried torches to light their paths, and their loud voices uttered cries of disbelief and outrage when they saw what was happening to their fellow student.

Worst of all, in front the large group strode headmaster Redgrave.

"Oakdown!" His voice carried like thunder over the hillside. "How could you?! He's one of your own kind!"

The Master took a tentative step back.

The headmaster rushed towards Bardson, who was still consumed by fire. He removed his cape and used it to cover the boy and smother the worst of the flames, while the others helped. When the flames were finally put out, the horrific injuries it had inflicted on Bardson's face and body was finally visible. His skin and flesh was a flaking mess of black and red.

"H-headmaster." Delirious of the pain, he was still eager to take his revenge on the one who had done this to him.

"S-sir. It w-was him..."

Redgrave leaned closer to his pupil to pick up his laboured whispers, his grey eyes widened.

"S-star…H-he s-swapped t-the s-star."

Headmaster Redgrave's face turning to one of realization and horror. He looked up at the Master, who suddenly found it difficult to keep his aim at Bardson or anyone else. Under the hateful gaze of the father whose son he had murdered, the anger that fuelled his bloodlust froze like a placid lake in the depths of winter. He lowered the laserscrewdriver, suddenly staring at the others with large, fearful eyes.

There was a stunned silence from the rest of the group as the horror of Bardson's words sunk in.

Fury and pain cut through the headmaster's voice. "You foul, depraved soul! You MURDERER!"

The crowd became a mob as the whisperers rose into cries for retribution. As if joined into one angry avenging beast, they climbed the hill.

The Master backed further away, still holding the laserscrewdriver in his hand, he made a half-hearted attempt to keep the others at bay. But his resolve to kill seemed to have vanished with his rage, leaving him powerless.

You MONSTER!" The beastlike mob roared. "You stone-cold KILLER!"

"Get him!"

"GET HIM!"

Terrified, the Master turned and fled.

**_TBC_**

**_Go to my author's page for a bit of musical fun. You'll find explanation and links under the heading "on His silent Mind"._**

**_Meanwhile, please review and comment on the story sofar, it helps me to keep my interest in writing the whole thing down._**


	7. Chapter 7

**9.**

He ran back up, dashing through the undergrowth, headfirst, diving into the tangled branches, crashing through thick weed, slipping over the muddy ground, falling down and getting up again. There was no time…No time to stop and hide. No time to think. The avenging beast was just behind, still in hot pursuit, its burning torches and flashing wands demanding his blood.

He heard them shout at him, curse his name, venting their outrage to the stars.

The skull-like face of Redgrave in his final moments flashed before his eyes, followed by the death throes of the human tramp as the last of the blows robbed him from his life.

Vicious and Vile. Immoral and Evil.

"Stop it!" He screamed.

But it didn't stop. Ravenius appeared, fear struck and begging for his life. Bardson's burnt body, all blistering and oozing crimson puss.

Loathsome and Low. Wicked and wrong.

"I said stop it!" Yelling it up to the sky and pressing his hands on his ears.

But the acquisitions kept coming in a repetitive rhythm of four, drumming inside his mind, burning into his brain. This was not what he had wanted. With fear, the guilt had returned, and it's tearing his hearts apart.

He reached the part of the woods where the trees became less dense. Larger parts of the forest's roof were open. In the west, an orange glow faintly shimmered. It paled the stars and looked like a fire burning in the sky.

The further he went uphill, the more brilliant the light became, and soon the night's stars had faded out of the sky, while the shadows on the forest floor grew shorter and shorter.

Through the network of tree trunks and low hanging branches, he saw a great open space appearing at the edge of the woods. A sea of red grass that bathed in the orange glow of the two setting suns stretched out before him. On the top of the hill was the lone silhouette of a man. His long coat was billowing behind him in the wind.

The Master dashed out of the woodlands and ran up towards the Doctor, who was very relieved to see him again.

"Master!" He exclaimed. "Finally! There you are, I was so worried!" He reached out his arms like he was trying to catch him, but the Master kept his momentum, rushing forwards and pushing the Doctor away from his side.

"Get your filthy hands off me! I HATE YOU!" He screamed in frustration and anger. "This!" He pointed with a trembling finger at the darkness of the woodland behind him while he stared at the baffled Doctor with tears welling up in his eyes. "This is all YOUR fault! You left me! You fucking coward! YOU LEFT ME!"

"Oh dear." The Doctor muttered, realizing the state he was in. "Master please! Listen! You're just confused, and right now, it's very dangerous to be confused! I checked your status reports. You really have to stop this or the damage to your neural system will be irreparable! Master!"

But the Master wasn't listening, for from out of the woodland appeared the avenging mob. He backed down a few steps, still looking at the Doctor with wild, frightened eyes, then swirled around and dashed over the hill to the other side.

"No! Master! No! Stop! You've got to stop! I can't terminate the program if you don't come with me! Please!"

But it was already too late. The Master ran down the slopes, pushing through the field of red grass. The acquisitions of the others who condemned him rang inside his mind like the thunder of hooves echoing over the racetracks.

Mad and diseased. Ill and demented.

Freak and monster. Killer and murderer.

He desperately wanted it to stop, but no matter how far or how fast he went, he couldn't outrun it. Those ugly, satanic voices kept chasing him.

With every step he took, the suns were climbing. To his jumbled logic, it was as if he had run back in time. Not only had he seen the midnight sky transform into night fall and sunset, now he felt as he was also heading back to the beginning, to the very place that the Doctor had wanted to show him before. For down in the valley lay his childhood home, his Father's family house. Oakdown hall was still there, waiting for him to return. This time the Master didn't hesitate. He took the narrow path that slivered over the fields down into the garden where the ancient silver Oaks stood majestically, their foliage glittering in the early evening glow. He found the doors to the mansion open, as if welcoming him home. As he passed underneath the spandrels, he gazed up quickly at his family's coat of arms, before entering the hallway and disappearing inside.

**10.**

When he was still a young boy, before he was taken by the elders to the fractured mirror that showed the cracks in the fabric of time and space. Before they named him Master. Before he became the Master. Before he went mad and everything went to hell, he used to hide in his father's library whenever he had done something wrong that made his mother angry. His father, a gentle man with limitless patience, would always shield him from his mother's rage. The broken antique vase was, in his father's eyes, never too expensive. His mother's pearls, although irretrievable from the bottom of the well in the garden, weren't irreplaceable. To him, kindness was always a better parent than hard discipline. When his father wasn't home, the Master would still come to the library whenever there was trouble. At the back of the endless rows of bookshelves, was a cabinet where his father kept the curiosities that he collected from visiting other times and planets for his diplomatic duties. The young Master would climb inside, and lock himself up in the dark with all the wonderful little trinkets that reminded him of him, and stay there till his mother stopped looking.

He found that he still fitted inside that small cabinet. With his knees pulled up and digging into his ribcage, he sat there quietly with his hands covering his eyes.

"Koshei?"

Alone in the dark, he held his breath. He hadn't heard that voice for such a long time. It must have been lifetimes.

"Koshei, is that you?"

The wetness that ran between his fingers reminded him to wipe the tears from his face.

The door to the cabinet swung open. Late afternoon light flooded inside the tiny cupboard. The tall silhouette of a man stood before him. A man that he had purposely forgotten, because he was lost to him so long ago, but was now once again sharing the same space with him, breathing the same air.

The Master gazed at his father, speechless for a moment as he tried to swallow the rest of his tears.

"Oh my dear boy. Why are you hiding in there? What happened?" Lord Oakdown was visible taken by his son's distress. The Master silently slipped out of the cupboard, bowing his head.

His father embraced him.

"I thought you were supposed to be at the Academy right now. It's a little early for spring break. You didn't run away again did you?"

His father looked him in the eyes, his face showed great concern, but he wasn't angry with him. He never was.

"You know your mother will be stressed out again when she hears of this." He said with a smile and placed his hands on his son's shoulders.

"Now tell me. What have you done now? Did the headmaster send you to the tower again? Is that why you ran away, Koshei?"

His father's gentle smile broke him. His resolve crumbled like a sandcastle in the waves.

"Oh Koshei." His father muttered and took his son back into his arms. "What's the matter my dear boy? Shh, Stop those tears. There is no need for them. You're back home now, with us. You're safe."

"I'm sorry sir. I didn't mean to." He cried.

"What happened? Was it those sounds inside your head? Did you fight with the other boys?"

The Master shook his head. "I…I did something."

"What Koshei? What did you do?"

"It's…horrible…It's all horrible…I can't…"

"You can just tell me, my boy." His father said firmly. "Tell me and I'll make sure that it will be set right again. I'm your father, there is no need for you to be ashamed."

The Master swallowed hard and gazed in his father's eyes. He couldn't. He just couldn't tell him. There were no words to describe what he had done. No language for deeds so foul and crimes so brutal. Uttering a single word about it would feel like he was condemning himself.

"If you can't tell me. Then show me." His father spread his arms and gestured for his son to come closer. The Master wavered, but was finally overwhelmed by the older Timelord's gentle encouragements. He leaned forward, letting his father's hands guide his head towards his, and allowed their minds collide.

A Timelord didn't have to open up entirely when sharing his thoughts and memories with others. If he wanted to, the Master could have slammed the door shut to one thing or the other, leaving out the parts that would hurt and incriminate him the most, and show his father the things that he would have wanted him to see. How he had struggled as a child to fit in, trying to act and pretend to be normal while deep inside he knew he was never going to be the carefree eight year old again from before his initiation ceremony. How the drums had followed him from the un-tempered schism, and had assaulted his sanity, slowly grinding away his old self like the waves polishing the pebbles on the beach, till there was nothing left but tiny grains of sand. How Theta had been his sole refuse and comfort in the agonizing years in the Academy, and how even that had been taken from him. How much it grieved him that the Doctor had left after breaking their sacred friendship.

He had wanted his father to understand all this, but what he wanted wasn't just his sympathy. What he craved for the most was his father's forgiveness. Theta had betrayed him, by giving up on him when he needed him the most. He hoped with whole his hearts that at least in his father's eyes, he somehow, was still redeemable.

So he opened up his mind completely to him, and showed him everything.

Memories and experiences passed through a telepathic connection, a bond that was as strong as the connection they shared in bloodline. They found their way into the older Timelord's head, and for once his father truly saw the world through his eyes. Every sick thought, every bad thing he had ever done, the people he had killed, all of his victims, future and past, who he had maimed and tortured, his ruthless ambitions, his selfishness, his _madness_, all compiling into the ugly truth that resided in his deepest, darkest self.

Lord Oakdown's grey-blue eyes snapped open. The contact was abruptly broken when he tore away from the Master, recoiling as if he had burned himself on a hot surface. He stared at his son, his eyes were wide in shock and horror.

"Sir?" The Master whispered, frightened. His voice was so small, it was as if he had reversed into his eight year old self.

"Father?"

Once he saw his father's face contorted in disgust and grief, all hope he had cherished for earning his forgiveness just vanished.

Lord Oakdown leaned back on his study desk. His frame quivered with hurt. Such demonic visions, such mindless violence and hate. How could all that exist inside a young boy's head? How could this have happened to his dear Koshei? The things he had seen, the awful, terrifying things he had come to known about his son, they broke his old hearts in pieces.

"Father." The Master tried, his voice trembling. Lost for words, he said the one thing that came close to what he really wanted to tell him. "I'm sorry."

Lord Oakdown dared not to look at him.

"I know what I have done was wrong. Theta showed me. You showed me that it was wrong. I won't do it again, I promise." He broke down and let the tears run freely down his face. "Please. You have to hide me. They are looking for me. Don't let them find me father."

Weakened by the revelation and overcome by the horrific truth, his father struggled to keep standing. The Master rushed over to support him, but the old lord pushed him away. He opened the drawer of his desk and took out his silver seal ring studded with a bloodstone that carried his parliamentary seal, the multiple concentric circles that represented the emblem of the Timelords in the House of Lords. One day, the Master would find himself reproducing an exact copy of this ring from his memories to function as an emergency vault for his life's essence. The real one would by then be long since lost to him, never to be retrieved.

Realizing what his father was about to do, the Master eyes widened in disbelief.

"Oh no sir, please don't."

Finally looking up at his son, lord Oakdown was heavily aggrieved for what he must do. It was his duty as one of the elders.

"You must understand. I have to let the elders know. Never has there been in Gallifreyan history such a heinous crime committed by a Timelord. Such an unnatural, beastly act. Such barbarism." He paused. A heartbeat of silence seemed like a century.

"Murder." He spat out the word as if it was contaminated. "Murder!" He lamented. "My own son! My own flesh and blood. Oh, Koshei, how could you?"

"Father please!" He was desperate, and his mind was deserting him. There was nothing clever left to say, no cunning act that could reverse this disaster. Why didn't his father understand? He trusted him, and was honest with him. He showed him everything, so why couldn't he forgive him?

"I don't know what they would do to me! Please, I beg you."

"It's those sounds." His father said grimly, with his eyes rimmed with tears, he brushed over his seal ring with trembling fingers. The seal began to cast a green glow into the darkening room. "Those drums inside your head. They must have poisoned your mind. I knew it. I knew it from the moment you came back from your initiation. You were changed, but I denied it, the foolish, stubborn old man that I was. I kept telling myself that you weren't ill, that you weren't somehow damaged by the un-tempered schism. Not you, not my bright shining Koshei. Not my beloved son. I should have acted, maybe then all of this could have been averted. Instead, I have let my pride decide over my son's fate."

He beat on his chest as if he was stabbing knives into his hearts and shook his head ruefully. Bitter tears dripped down his nose and splashed on the glowing ring.

The Master was close to being hysteric. Not only did his father refuse to forgive him, he was about to betray him by exposing his crimes to the elders. He didn't understand. How could he do this to him? He knew what he had done was terrible, he still had that bit of common sense left in him to realize that, but this was his_ father_. He used to be able to tell him anything, and he would accept him as he was, without judgement, without condemning him like all the others did.

But now he was just like the pretentious Doctor who couldn't stand the sight of him. The loathsome, vicious, and vile creature that he was, that he had become. It was his own fault, really. He had scared them away by showing the monsters that lurked inside his mind. Accustomed to see the mask that he wore so diligently to hide his true self, only for gaining their acceptance, they turned their backs on him the minute his strength and mind faded and he could no longer sustain the lie.

"You can't!" He screamed, his voice hoarse. "They'll punish me for what I've done."

"And rightfully so!" His father replied with a sudden fury and severity that cast an eternal darkness over the Master's hearts. "What you've done is despicable and dishonourable. You have shamed our family's name! As long as Gallifreyan justice prevails, you deserve all the punishment that you'll get!"

A silence fell between them. Lord Oakdown's stern expression melted when he saw the shame in his boy's eyes.

"Look, son. I can still plead for you to the elders for leniency."

"You're lying!" The Master shook his head frantically. "If they catch me they are going to execute me! I've seen the look in headmaster Redgave's eyes. He's out for my blood. He won't just let me go."

"I won't let that happen to you!" He father said firmly. "I will explain everything. Let them know that it is that sound inside your head that had twisted your reason and made you insane." He grimaced when the words passed his lips. There, he said it. His son was mad.

"Look at me son. You need help. You can't go on like this. I promise that once they know what made you do all this they won't be too harsh on you."

The Master felt numb and dead like a fallen tree in the depth of winter. He watched with hollow eyes how the green glow grew into a projection of the elders' sanctuary chamber that was hidden deep inside the citadel. A dark void of a room, with high vaulted ceiling, circular in form, with in the middle a long table. The elders were seated around it, all dressed in their ceremonial robes. The Master had once cherished such aspiration to sit amongst them one day.

How foolish he had been, dreaming his madman's dreams.

"What would they do to me?" He finally dared to ask.

"They'll just…send you away."

"Away? You mean like how they send me away to the tower?" The tears were still streaming down, but a mad smile broke through his grief-struck face. "Only now, it's forever. And you will let them take me, and lock me away, alone, in the dark. Because I'm damaged. Because I'm mad. Because of what I did, am I no longer your son? "

"Koshei." His father sounded heartbroken. "It's not only your fault. It's also mine. I've failed you. I'm sorry."

The laughter that broke through his tears sounded frenetic and hollow. "You always are. Both of you." The Doctor and his father, they were always so _incredibly_ sorry for him, but it seemed that neither of them ever meant it. The faces of the elders became clear as the connection established itself. Soon, they would be able to open the communication portal. Soon, they will hear from his father's mouth what the Master had done. Cries of horror and outrage would follow, and they would demand retribution for all the horrific things crimes that he had committed.

He couldn't let that happen.

He couldn't let him destroy his life.

Ravenius' laserscrewdriver burnt like a dead star, cold and icy in his hand.

When his father turned away from him for a moment, he fired the weapon at him. Once was enough to send the old man collapsing on his knees. His trembling hand dropped the seal ring. It bounced once on the ground before it started rolling over the floorboards. The Master stopped it with his foot. While he reached down to pick it up, he felt like he was wandering inside a dream, with all motions slowed down, and with every tiny detail in the room carrying some sort of significance. He turned to see how the projection of the elders' chamber slowly vanished as his father's mental connection with the citadel weakened, and was finally lost.

As if he was wounded, he stumbled over to his father.

He was lying on his back, staring up at his son. Paralyzed from the waist down, his breathing was laboured. The tiny red hole that the laser had burnt inside his lungs seemed hardly deadly, but it was.

His father was dying, and when a Timelord dies, his body would try to cheat death by regeneration. Already, lord Oakdown's face was shrouded by a calm, golden glow.

"Where is your Tardis, father?" He asked as he forced his hearts to turn cold, knowing that the lord's seal ring was also the Tardis key.

His father kept his eyes on his fallen son. For a moment, it seemed that he wasn't going to tell him anything. But then his mouth opened and weakly, he whispered his answer to him.

Perhaps the old lord had resigned to his fate. Perhaps, the guilt he had felt for failing him had overtaken his hearts, or perhaps, in his final moments, he had realized that his love for son was stronger than his pride, and he had been finally able to forgive him, even for the greatest of his sins.

Whatever the reason it was for his father to offer him a way to escape, the Master would never know.

A mad, joyless smile crept over his tear-strained face.

He knew that his father had spoken the truth.

"Four." He whispered, and shot him, just moments before he regenerated.

**11.**

The endless flight of stairs seemed…well endless. The Doctor was getting out of breath and the others were starting to lag behind. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to propose a healthy jog for the first 200 steps or so to keep morals high. Judging by his companions' long faces, the mood was sinking faster than quicksand.

"Oh God. I think…I might have…burnt up a lung." Aurelia wheezed. She threw her head back and stared up where the ceiling was supposed to be. Still, even after such a long climb, no more was revealed than the cloudy haze that they had seen from below. "Oh! This thing goes on and on forever!" She shouted, disappointed.

"Oh don't say that." The Doctor shook his head, resting his tired leg muscles by leaning with his backside against the wall.

"That would be pointless. If anything, this tower isn't pointless. Everything in here is built with a purpose. Like this staircase."

He felt something sticking in his back so he turned. A rusted cable, thumb-sized thick, ran over the dark stones and disappeared inside a crack. He furrowed his brows. Up until now, the wall of the octagonal tower had been bare. With his eyes he followed the cable running over the tower, where it went straight up, cutting through the flight of circular staircases like a tree trunk growing through the foliage till it disappeared into infinity. He turned and looked around. From different spots on every single one of the walls, similar cables emerged from the stones and went up towards the sky.

"What is that?" He muttered, intrigued. He grabbed hold of the cable and tried to tear the plastic casing off. A shock went through his fingers sending him jumping backwards. "Ough!" The Doctor exclaimed, just before a second spark hit him. The amount of electricity he received was enough to make his hair stand up in crazy spikes.

"I said ough! Stop it!" He let go of the wire, but a third spark ignited and slapped his bum like a miniature bolt of lightening.

"Stop it! I get it, I get it, don't mess with the wiring!" He held up his hands above his head. Seemingly content with the Doctor's surrender, the angry sparks suddenly seized.

"You know, you remind me of one of our hamsters in the lab." Aurelia smirked. "The one that got out of his cage and thought the computer wiring looked rather scrumptious. Actually." She leaned forward to the Doctor and sniffed. "You smell like him too. Fuzzy we called him after his little accident. He kept chasing after his own stubby little tail in circles."

"Fuzzy was one lucky rodent if he didn't have to mentally deal with you afterwards. Let me see, shock therapy or Aurelia's incessant moaning. Oh, I think, I'll go for the first one every time." The Doctor replied, raising his eyebrows at her as her face turned sour. "Anyway, I don't need to act like a mindless vandal or like a demented hamster to get to know what's going on here." He held his sonicscrewdriver up and beamed a cheeky smile at the others. "I've got this."

He whizzed the sonic tip over the cable. Where the blue light hit the casing, the wiring inside became visible. The Doctor turned the end of the laserscrewdriver, and a projection appeared that looked like a display of an old-fashioned computer screen with a black background and green letters.

"Oh look at that." The Doctor muttered, fascinated. "A DOS operating system, gosh, this is truly ancient."

"What is it?" Neil asked, being unfamiliar with the term.

"DOS. Short for Disk Operating System. Used to be one of the first operation systems for the computer. Invented somewhere in the booming eighties of the 20th century, somewhat bothersome to use, people had to learn pages of commandos before they could even start-up a program, so it was quickly abandoned for something more simple. Not that DOS wasn't simple, the language of the program it-self was written in binary coding. Now you've got what? The octal numeral system?"

"Hexadecimal." Will answered. All of today's software is written in hexadecimal coding."

"Yes Exactly. So that would make this very old-fashion, and very outdated. Now why would someone, or something who's in possession of the technology to build this tower, this Arc that has the capacity to survive even the destruction of an entire planet, write an operation program in binary form?" The Doctor mused. "There are hardly any advantages to it. Except…"

"Except for what?" Will asked.

"Well, it's hardly an energy drain, is it? If you've got only a limited source of power, and you don't want to run something incredibly complex, you might as well use binary coding…" The Doctor's face lit up. "That's it!" He whizzed the sonic over the screen. Numbers appeared, flowing down in a long list. "These cables, they don't just disappear into the walls. They tap into them, draining energy out the building itself."

"What do you mean?" Neil asked in confusion. "How can you get power out of a building?"

"It's the twin red giants burning up in the sky. The energy of their beams of sunlight is captured by the dark stones of the tower, trapping it as heat inside these walls before these cables convert it into electricity. The amount that is generated is absolutely tiny, not even enough to lit up the little red standby light of a 21th century espresso machine, but still…it's brilliant!" He felt the hope that he had kept inside his hearts swell as he considered who could have possibly created such a thing to aid in his survival. Only one sprang to mind.

"But why is all that energy needed? There's hardly a light bulb in sight." Neil commented.

Well, It was needed to run a simple operation program, obviously."

"And what is it exactly operating?" Will asked.

"Good question. What is it operating? Now, as always, the devil is in the detail." The Doctor whirred the sonic tip over the screen, scrolling further down. The screen flickered and the endless list of numbers seized. The sound of a MAC starting up suddenly rang out of the walls as if invisible speakers were incorporated inside, followed by the black screen being replaced by a baby blue startup display showing the MAC symbol with a grey bar in the middle that slowly filled up. The others stared at the Doctor.

"I can't stand DOS." He explained and shrugged. "Gives me a headache to remember all those commands. Anyway, it won't take too much energy to boot this up. He won't notice a thing."

The desktop appeared. "Ah, there you go. Let me see." The Doctor mumbled, and started going through the files. "31% of the energy is needed to run the operation system itself. Would be a tad less of course considering the MAC operator. Still, wouldn't be far off. 12% used on data processing and data storage, and 5% for operating a life support system." His hearts leaped up when he realized the meaning of this. Then his eyes were drawn to an unusual reading. "11% is used to run a program that is currently active." The Doctor cocked his eyebrows in surprise.

Neil looked worriedly over the Doctor's shoulders at the information displayed on screen. "You mean someone is sitting behind a computer terminal upstairs?"

"Oh that freaks me out." Aurelia shivered. "Does that mean he can see us?"

"It's not for surveillance purposes. There are no signals coming from down here travelling up to feed the program." The Doctor stared at the data of program 110012 that was displayed in front of him. "No, there seems to be only one input and one output source, which is all the way up there." He stared at the ceiling.

Could it be? Could it _really_ be you?

He was about to dig for more information when an angry spark ignited from the cable from where he was tapping into the system. The Doctor reeled back just in time to avoid another nasty shock, but had to watch helplessly how the electrical current scrambled the information on the holographic display before it was turned off. He whirred his screwdriver over the wires, trying to retrieve the signal, but it seemed that it had been shut down permanently.

"Doctor, it looks like someone really doesn't want you to mess with it." Neil tried, noticing the fixated and determined look in the Timelord's eyes. "Maybe you should leave it alone."

The Doctor glanced up at the top, his eyes following the wires that all led to the same source. They seemed to be everywhere now; he couldn't turn around facing any of the tower walls without deliberately searching for them. Neil got it all wrong. The more this strange place tried to hide its secrets from him, the more obsessed and stubborn he became to find out what that great secret was. He started climbing the steps with a renewed strength coursing through his body, and replied to the others with the only word that could summarize all of his excitement, fixation and hope.

"Allons-y!" He yelled as if it was a battle cry, and charged at his opponent, the never-ending staircase that reached all the way up to the nightmare child.

**12.**

He found him in library, sitting on the floor in a foetal position, huddled away in the corner furthest away from his father's body. Sensing him near, the Master looked up. His were eyes red. His cheeks were stained with the salt of dried-up tears, but he was no longer crying. There were no tears left in him. The Doctor wanted to say something to comfort his grief. He couldn't think of anything.

The Master glanced down at his father. "He's dead." He said in a mater of fact voice, as if to explain to him his father's silence, the strangeness of him lying on the floor, eyes still opened wide, still gazing into the cold void.

The Doctor nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry. It wasn't my intention to let you remember all this."

"Oh I don't blame you. How can I? You do what you have to do. It's what you're for. I'm just not clever enough." He swallowed a lump from his throat. "I forgot about him. Haven't remembered him for hundreds of years. Those drums, they can be such a curse and such a blessing at the same time."

Softly, he rocked his body back and forth, keeping his eyes fixed on the corpse.

"It's different now. I might live another hundred years, and I still won't be able to forget that face again."

"You have to come with me." The Doctor urged. He knew that the Master was suffering, but he couldn't allow him to dwell in his disastrous memories for much longer. The intruders had found their way into the Arc, and one of them had even attempted to tap into the system. The careless vandal had almost damaged it beyond repair. He had to return to the main system core immediately and made sure that it wouldn't happen again. Meanwhile, the Master wasn't exactly getting any saner.

"Listen to me. Your neural pathways are severely damaged. We need to terminate this program immediately."

But the Master didn't move from his place. Willingly hypnotized by the movement of going back and forth, back and forth, he let the soundless lullaby cradle his grief to sleep.

There was more to this.

He recalled how he had stumbled to the back of the library, a murderer guilty of patricide. He found his father's Tardis, a marvellous machine in its prime disguised as his study in the corner of the chamber. He activated it with the seal ring, making the Tardis' core appeared with the rest of the console room. Sensing his crimes like a loyal steed would smell the scent of his owner's blood, the beating heart of the machine churned and whizzed as it tried to throw off the Master's control. He had to beat it back into submission, breaking the Tardis' will by damaging its non-vital systems and by erasing the databank that contained all of his father's memories. Finally, he left Gallifrey in the stolen Tardis, the noble son of a Lord, turned into a fugitive and outcast, banished by his own people, his name damned by the other Timelords for eternity.

His life was never the same again.

"I have been alone ever since." He whispered, his eyes staring vacantly into the far distance. "Nothing but the sound of drums to steal my sleep, a companion of death and misery." He paused for a moment.

"I saw how the light dimmed in his eyes. It was the most beautiful thing, so elusive and fragile. Still it burns inside my brains like a flame."

Caught in his madness, he continued in a bizarre mantra, the prose of a poem of a long-dead Russian writer tangled with his own words.

"The night. The street. The lamp. The light glows pale. The light glows dim. But still the light goes on. Live another hundred years, another hundred turns. The night. The street. The lamp. And still the light goes on."

The Doctor crouched down beside him and looked him in the eyes. "It's your guilt. You didn't know you could feel remorse, but you can, and now it's ruining your mind. It's killing you. Master, I know it's hard. But you can't keep up like this. You've got to snap out of it."

"Begin again each morning, we know the words by now, a light, a street, a lamp, a light that never dies." He whispered, and stared back into the Doctor's eyes.

"Master?"

He swallowed and blinked.

"Please." He begged, his spirit crushed and broken. "Please. Take me back."

The room disappeared. It was swallowed whole by a dark void that left nothing standing except for the Doctor and the Master, as if they were the only two beings left in a dark universe, long after the light of the last star had dimmed.

A sudden jolt, followed by a heavy weight that pulled on the Master's feet, and the surroundings began to change again. A net resembling a computer matrix was formed. Lines were drawn, composing walls, and floors, and ceilings. A paper-thin layer of colour and texture swept over it, filling in the shapes as if a child was busy with a large crayon to colour a print. First, the large surfaces were covered; a smudged, greenish black to fill in the coarse stone walls, a mix of dirty brown and yellow to spread over the straw-covered floors. Then the details followed. A door corroded down into a skeletal frame. The rusted bars of cages lined up at the side of the corridor, sitting in shallow niches that were hacked out of the walls. The flickering flames of the torches that lit the path to his cell. People started to appear, ghosts created out of thin air before their frames solidified into guards and inmates. The prisoners screamed frantically and reached out for the Doctor with their faces pressed against the bars, and madness swirling in their frightened eyes.

The Doctor stared at all of this. It greatly worried him how everything had changed for the worse. He studied the Master who stumbled towards the end of the corridor with his head bowed, seemingly untouched by the appalling circumstances. Two guards marched over to them. They were both dressed in late 18th century military uniforms. With rapiers dangling from their belts, they saluted the Doctor in strict unison.

"You brought back the prisoner sir?"

The Doctor nodded solemnly. Knowing what was to come, he didn't want this to continue, but was left powerless. The truth was that although it seemed that he was in control of the situation, he never truly was. Even back in the simulation of the 1950s asylum, it was the Master who decided, albeit unconsciously, how this world turned out to be. He could make this place as comforting and as peaceful as he wanted, a sanctuary for his damaged soul, an image of heaven even, would he have believed in such a thing. But the Master's mind wouldn't let him. In his hearts, he didn't believe he deserved anything better, so he created a world of nightmares and imprisonment, and of suffering and darkness. It was a merciless punishment bestowed on himself to appease a sense of guilt that seemed impossible to satisfy, and was always hungry for more.

And each time the Doctor failed, the Master's creations became more vicious and more unforgiving on himself.

He glanced one last time at the Master, who's stared ahead, eyes unblinking, in cold acceptance of his fate.

"Take him away." The Doctor ordered with pain in his hearts.

The guards grabbed the Master by his arms and dragged him to a chamber at the back where a fire was burning in a brazier. They took his clothes from him, leaving him shamefully naked and shivering of the cold, but he didn't offer any resistance. They fastened iron chains around his wrists and fastened a rusted collar around his neck. He didn't even attempt to set himself free. A brutal blow on the side of his head, and he was down on the floor. The second blow from the other guard landed on his chest and two of his ribs snapped. He hardly gave a whimper. They continued to beat him down like a dog, kicking and hitting him in his stomach, his legs and arms, his face, his groin. During this entire ordeal, not a single scream parted from his lips.

Finally they hauled him back up. His body was bleeding, and was reduced to a painful sack of bruised, raw skin and broken bones. Head down, he watched how his toes dragged over the filth while drops of blood dripped from his broken nose and splashed on the floor. They tossed him in his cell, a tiny rusty cage that was barely large enough to fit in a human being. The ground was covered by a pile of dirty straw that was swarming with lice. He crawled in a corner, desperate now to be left in peace. Hiding his face in the shadows, he felt the rough tugs on his collar and wrists as they chained him to the wall. Then the door slammed shut with a loud metallic clang, and he was left to himself.

The Doctor watched over him through the iron bars from the corner of the corridor. Tiredness had mercifully settled over the Master and he had finally fallen asleep. At least now, the Doctor hoped, he would be free from his suffering for a short while. He longed to stay and to guard him from the monsters he knew were about to come. But he couldn't, so he turned away with a heavy heart and strode down the darkened corridor.

There wasn't much time left before the Master started to dream.

As the Doctor walked passed the crowded cages with screaming madmen and cowering inmates, his body flashed once, then twice, as if he was an image that was caught in static. A third flash, and the Doctor walked on, but now he was in black and white, with the colour drained from his clothes and skin. Another flash, and his frame became transparent. By the time he reached the other end of the hallway, he could only be seen as a distortion in the fabric of this reality, a ripple of air that made a vague suggestion of his existence.

One last flash, and then he disappeared.

_**TBC **_

_As always please review and comment, meanwhile visit my author's page for a bit of music therapy._


	8. Chapter 8

**Fear**

1.

It was absurd that he didn't recognize it earlier. It wasn't like he hadn't had enough clues thrown at him to notice anything. Neil's remark about the lack of light-bulbs in this place should have rang off alarm bells or triggered him to think, at least that was what the Doctor contemplated. The problem was that his mind seemed to prefer to run on its own, too occupied by the thought of finding the Master to notice the bloody obvious. It irritated the Doctor. Maybe he was getting old.

It was one of those unwritten laws of life that something only gained in importance when it was gone. The Doctor found this to be definitely true for your home planet, the odd human companion, your childhood-friend turned arch-nemesis, and…for the lights in the tower. One moment it was still there, and he could easily count the steps on the winding staircase and follow the cables that ran criss-cross over the walls. Next thing he knew, it was gone, like someone had turned off the master switch, and the Doctor and his companions were suddenly surrounded by pitch-black darkness.

"Hey! Who turned off the lights?" Will yelled.

"What's happening?" Neil asked uneasily.

The Doctor looked up. He hadn't noticed before that the light was coming from the ceiling. That white haze that constantly hid the top of the tower had been exceptionally bright, like a cloudy sky in the long and dreary winter months. He went through his pockets and took out his sonic. Activating the small light at the tip, he was able to create a light beam that was bright enough to let him see at least two to three steps ahead.

"Everyone still here?" He swept the beam over the others, and counted three worried faces. "Okay. Now, let's not panic. It's just the lights at the top. Someone must have turned it off."

"You don't say." Aurelia replied with sarcasm. "Now what? I'm not going any further! One slip over the side and you're done for!"

"We've got light." The Doctor answered, irritated by her as usual. "We still know where we're going. There is no use in staying where we are."

"Well, it's a whole lot better than keep running around like a headless, directionless chicken." Aurelia complained.

The Doctor considered for a moment how her face oddly resembled that of a harpy when the light beam hit her in a certain way. "Brilliant. What do you want to do then? You want to just stand here? Grow old and die of old age?"

"I want us to have at least an idea that we're getting somewhere. Before that, I won't move a single step. We've been climbing this thing for hours now!"

The Doctor pressed his lips together into a thin white line and counted his dual hearts beats to forty. There weren't a lot of people who could irritate him as much as Aurelia did, although Donna's mom could be excruciating at times.

"Look, the stairs are going up and that's where I am going. Up! You want to stay, that's fine by me." He didn't travel all the way through the timevortex to be so close to his own salvation, only to be told by this screeching harpy that his quest had been futile. The Doctor turned around and started climbing the staircase again. Neil and Will stared at each other for a moment. They were hesitant to go without their teammate.

"Hey! You can't just leave me here in the dark all on my own!" Aurelia yelled after him.

The Doctor swirled around and shrugged at her with a wide grin plastered over his face. "Oh don't worry! We'll pick you up on our way down. Could take a while though. I don't exactly know what's up there, and this staircase is _pretty_ long."

"But...that could take ages. What if something's out there trying to get me?" Although she kept her composure, a hint of fear sounded through her stubbornness.

"Oh I don't know, just start criticizing them incessantly like you always do and they probably run the other way with their scaly tails between their legs."

Aurelia was just inhaling a deep breath to tell the Doctor to go fuzz himself when Will intervened and managed to keep the conversation civilized.

"I'll stay with her." He rummaged through his backpack and took out a searchlight. He switched it on and gave it his female colleague. "Took two of these from the cruiser." He threw the other one at Neil who caught it in mid-air. Aurelia shone the beam directly in the Doctor's face. "Now you can go. Good riddance, asshole!"

"Right…Blimey." The Doctor mumbled before he turned around again and went up the stairs with Neil.

"Sorry for that." He said, trying to apologize for his friend's behaviour. "She's not always this difficult. Not when you know her little better. Must be this place. It gets on her nerves."

"I don't blame her." The Doctor mumbled, keeping his eyes on the steps ahead. "I wasn't exactly my own friendly, level-headed self."

"She's not daft or anything. She knows there's nothing in the dark. It's only that when she's stressed out, she kinda looses her head."

"Actually, there are good reasons to be afraid of the dark." The Doctor shone the blue light of his sonicscrewdriver over the edge of the staircase. The light beam disappeared into the dark pit without ever hitting the ground. "Shadows that shift and swarm and melt the flesh. Things that go bump at midnight and steal your soul. Goulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Only a fool wouldn't be afraid."

They had only ascended three levels up when a piercing scream cut through the darkness behind them.

Neil was alarmed. "That's Aurelia!"

The Doctor rushed back to the others. "Stay there!" He ordered as he jumped down three steps at the time. "And keep that light burning!" He could slap himself for being so dim-witted to leave those two behind. With his hearts bouncing inside his chest, his mind ran through all the possible monsters they could be facing right now. The Vastha Nerada, Dalek soldiers, the Skaro degradations, the horde of Travesties. If the prisoner could have survived the destruction of Gallifrey locked away in this tower, then what else could have escaped the final destruction of the Timewar?

Will and Aurelia were turned with their backs at him, facing whatever it was that crept at their feet in the shadows.

"What is it? What happened?" The Doctor shouted.

"C-centipede!" Aurelia stammered, her face so pale that it almost radiated light by its own.

"What? You screamed like that because you saw a little bug?" He aimed the light of his sonic at the steps below, expecting to see a harmless little creature scuttle away to safety, but instead the circle of light hit a bizarre looking flattened head the size of a wheelbarrow. It had red beady eyes and a massive pair of claws. The Doctor drew back the others when the antennas of the giant arthropod swept over them in search of the scent of food.

"Get up the stairs, both of you! Don't touch the claws! One sting and you're dead! Go! Go! GO!"

Will and Aurelia dashed forward, but the giant centipede responded quickly as if triggered by their movements. It crawled underneath the stairs and disappeared, its elongated body gliding fast over a wave of legs till it stuck its ugly head around the edge of the staircase again, just a few steps away from the two humans. It flashed its claws at them. Aurelia screamed and covered her eyes.

"Make it go away! Make it go away! Please!" She screamed. Will went frantically through his backpack and took out a flare gun. He aimed it at the centipede and pulled the trigger. A light flare shot out and struck the creature in its segmented body armour. It rushed back underneath the staircase in hiding.

"It's okay Aurelia. It's gone now. It's gone." Will breathed, and glanced over his shoulder at his friend who was still close to being hysteric.

"I don't think there's only one." The Doctor aimed the light at the steps below and revealed the horde of arthropodes that were sweeping up the stairs, forming a crazy carpet of swarming segments and legs, climbing on top and underneath the coil of bodies. It produced a loud and most unsettling noise like someone was scratching his nails over a blackboard as their hard outer shells rubbed against each other.

Will spun around and was about to fire again when a hand, a skeletal hand that was cold and spidery, grabbed his shoulder. He looked up and saw the most horrific face staring back at him with vacant, bloodshot eyes. The nightmare creature's mouth opened to reveal a swollen black tongue and shark-like teeth, while blood dripped down its chin, and pieces of rotting meat dangled from its cheek bones. Will screamed like a girl. With his fingers turning into soft butter he dropped the flare gun. Struggling to get away with all the anxiety of a mouse caught in a death-trap, he found himself pinned down by another pair of hands emerging out of the stone walls.

2.

"Doctor?" Neil saw a shadow move at his right side. "Doctor is that you?"

He aimed his torchlight downstairs. It wasn't possible of course, but the light revealed a man in his late fifties, sitting calmly in a chair.

"Dad?" Neil backed away. With his hands trembling he turned the light away. "But it can't be. It can't be you."

He turned the beam back on the same spot. His father was sitting in a row with other men who were all prominent scientists in Neil's academic field. Dim lights suddenly switched on and reveal a congress room filled with an audience of astronomers.

Neil found himself standing on a podium. Bright spots were shining in his face. On the stand in front of him was a copy of his thesis. It described his work, the story of his discovery of the mythical planet. "And so I conclude." He spoke into the microphone, aware of the nervous tickle in the back his throat. "Not only does the planet Pevogla still exists. The results that we have gathered provides proof that Pevogla's gravity field is actually so immense that it challenges the forces of the blackhole and creates a force-equilibrium that sustains the existence of the very planet inside the its ravaging heart without it being destroyed."

As soon as he stopped speaking, an older gentleman rose from his seat.

"This is preposterous. I've never heard such nonsense!"

Neil started to sweat.

"Sir, if you would like to start a scientific discussion that's alright by me." He tried, determined to defend his findings. "The data we provide clearly show-"

"Your data must be forgery! Nothing could land on the surface of a planet with such an enormous gravity field. Your whole expedition is a scam!"

Someone threw his thesis at him. Neil backed away. ""No, no! We really were there. It's true! It's all true! Please! Just take a better look at the data!"

But his audience had already stopped listening to him. Suddenly, everyone single one of them was calling him a fraud and was chucking his scientific report at him. Facing his worst nightmare, Neil stepped further back. The sweat was dripping down his neck and soaking the collar of his shirt. He caught sight of his father who, sitting alone in the middle of the outraged crowd, bowed his head and covered his eyes in shame. The others started to make their way up. They packed together in front of the podium. He found himself surrounded by angry people who were reaching out at him with reddened faces. Someone grabbed his left foot and dragged him down. His heart fluttered wildly in his chest. For a second, reality flashed before his eyes. He looked over the edge of the staircase with the tips of his toes balancing on the brink and the rest of him leaning forward dangerously. Paralysed by fear, he blinked the sweat out of his eyes, and the nightmare image disappeared, only to return him on the stage with the angry crowd. Half-realizing with was going on and facing the chaotic wall of clutching hands, Neil screamed.

3.

The Doctor had been rushing towards Will when he suddenly found himself holding a revolver in his hand. He was back in the Naismith mansion. Standing on his last strength, he faced Rassilon who had just emerged from the gate. As if on instinct, he raised the revolver and kept it pointed at him while at the same time, he was painfully aware of the Master's presence in the room.

"Kill him!" The Master urged, through his voice rang a confusing mix of fear, maliciousness and greed. "He's the Lord President. Kill him and Gallifrey could be yours!"

He stared at Rassilon who seemed so very confident and strong. Standing close enough to pick up his thoughts, The Master's pleads ran through his head. _We can still change things, Doctor. You and I. Together we could rule like gods. _

He stood between the two men, horrified by the choice he was offered, unable to decide. This time there was no weeping angel guarding over him, no easy way out. He was forced to murder one of them.

Calm and dignified, the lord president strode forward. "Chose." He demanded.

"You are a coward." The Master told him, fear burning in his eyes. "You always were a coward. Go on then. Do it!" Frightened by the decision he had to make, and with the gun trembling in his hand, he stepped with his heels on the edge of the staircase, and almost lost balance. Reality flashed in front of the Doctor's eyes. He looked down and stared right into the black pit below. It was a hell of a long way to fall. He shot a glance at Aurelia, who was still clutching her hands on her eyes and screamed as the pests swarmed around her. He saw how Will was trying to tear himself free from the wall where the dead creatures held him down.

Every one of them was paralysed by fear.

Finally realizing what he should do, he lowered the gun.

"What are you doing?" Rassilon stared coldly at him as he raised his deadly gauntlet. The metal started to glow threateningly. "You have to chose, which of us is it going to be, Doctor?"

The Doctor fiddled with his sonic screwdriver, quickly adapting the calibrations. "If it's up to me, neither of you." He said firmly, and aimed the sonic at his own head while he dropped the gun over the edge of the staircase into the dark abyss below.

"You lord-president." He said with a renewed confidence. "I've already sent you back to your private hell once. No need for me do it again. And as for you." He gazed at the Master with his eyes gleaming with determination. "I didn't travel here all the way through time and space to kill you, you dumb brick. I came here to save you, and that's exactly what I'm going to do."

He activated the sonic screwdriver. A wave of blue energy blasted from the tip and hit the Doctor and the others. The Lord president and the Master both disappear in front of the Doctor's eyes. He turned to Aurelia and Will and saw the horde of centipedes and the army of living dead vanish into thin air, leaving only the two humans standing on shivering legs.

"Yes!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Oh yes! It worked!"

Will gazed around with eyes still wide in shock. "W-Where are they? Where did they go?"

"Filtered them out of our brains." The Doctor held up the sonic. "It wasn't real. None of it was. Someone up there was sending out brainwaves that were infested with fear. They were amplified by the tower and the surrounding diamond lake. Penetrating into our minds, they showed us everything, everything we dreaded, everything that each of feared the most." He nodded his head at Aurelia, who was still hugging herself tightly. "With you it was a staircase swarming with creepy crawlies. And with you." He looked at Will. "Actually I'm sure what it was. Some sort of army of flesh-eating zombies? Am I right?"

"I'm sorry. I must have watched too many horror movies." Will admitted, a bit embarrassed.

"Nah, don't be sorry. Fear is seldom rational, that's how the bugger manages to sneak up on us behind our backs. The only thing you should apologize for, is for carrying a revolver. Don't you know that these things are dangerous? And why is it that everyone I meet nowadays is bringing along a gun with him?" He added, appalled.

"It was just a flare gun." Will quickly picked it up and put it back inside his backpack. "Was more for signalling purposes than it was meant as a firearm."

"Blimey, to be a pacifist in a universe filled with trigger-happy fools." The doctor commented with a frown.

"So none of it was real? There were no-" Aurelia swallowed the rest of her words as fear tightened her throat merely by remembering those disgusting creatures.

"No, there was nothing to fear but fear itself. - And the black pit of course, which together with gravity makes a rather deadly combination in situations like these."

A scream cut through the darkness. Doctor pushed the others aside as he realized that Neil was still all by himself, his mind left open and undefended for the fear waves to penetrate. "Follow me and stay close! He yelled back as he rushed up the stairs. "The sonic screwdriver only has a limited range!"

3.

The crowd and the congress room were gone. Neil found himself back in the tower with the tug of gravity pulling on his body as he tipped over. Trying to regain balance, he swung with his arms like a demented bird. It was useless. He was about to be swallowed by the dark abyss when he felt a pull on his arm that jerked him backwards. Caught in momentum, he fell back, and passed right through the walls as if he was made of smoke instead of flesh and bones.

4.

He was here. He was absolutely sure about it. He left him here, right where he was standing. But by the time he arrived Neil had completely vanished.

"Doctor, what happened to him?" Will asked, horrified. "Did they get him? He didn't fall, did he?"

The Doctor silently picked up the torchlight that Neil had left behind. It had rolled away from the wall and was lying right by the edge of the staircase.

Doctor?"

"I'm sorry." He answered truthfully.

Aurelia had been standing silently at the back, but the Doctor's seemingly lack of response to Neil's fate shook her out of her impassive state.

"Is that all you've got to say? I'm sorry? Neil is gone!" She shouted at him as her eyes rimmed with tears. "This is all your fault! You took us, you dragged us here to this cursed place!"

The Doctor stared down at his feet, his face grim and guilt ridden.

"Calm down Aurelia." Will held back his grief-struck friend. "It was Neil who wanted to follow the doctor. It isn't the doctor's fault." He took Aurelia in his arms where she turned her face away from him. Her shoulders shook when she started to sob.

He left them both alone for a moment. Staring gravely ahead, he cursed himself for living such a long life that he had actually become used to death as his sole, faithful companion. Watching how Aurelia and Neil dealt with their grief, he wondered when he had actually lost that part of his humanity.

"We have to keep moving." He told them after while. "We can't stay here."

5.  
Neil stared around with his eyes wide in amazement. The last thing he remembered clearly was that he was looking into a gaping abyss and was facing a most gruesome death. Now he found himself inside a narrow corridor between two walls, entangled in a chaotic ball of cables.

"You're inside the tower walls." A man appeared from the shadows. Neil sighed of relief when he recognized the tall stranger. "You're in between virtual reality and reality." He continued to explain. It was in his habit to do so. He had no idea if the human would understand any of it, although he tried to keep it as simple as possible. "I'm sorry that you're stuck here for while, but I had to save you. You were about to fall to your death."

To his astonishment, the human came over and hugged him.

"Oh thank you! Thank you for saving my life Doctor."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. "How come you know my name?"

"What do you mean?"

"My name. I haven't told you my name yet. Still you called me Doctor."

"But you ARE the Doctor." Neil smiled, convinced that the Timelord was just having one of his more eccentric moments. "Where are the others? Did you save them too?"

"The others? Oh you mean the other tress-passers who came here with you in that intergalactic cruiser? They are still wandering around in the Tower somewhere. I must say they are a clever lot. Well, at least one of them was clever. They found out about the corrupted brainwaves and stopped it before it could do any real damage." He paused. "Hang on, what do you mean, you ARE the Doctor, just as simply as that? Do we know each other? Have we met?"

"Well that's who you are, right?" Poor Neil was getting more and more confused as the conversation went on. "You introduced yourself as the doctor when we first met at the fuel station, isn't that your real name?"

"You met me before. And you know me, or at least a man very much like me." The Doctor pondered. "I am sorry, but my processing capacities are currently a bit below optimum. I had to change into solidvid form to pull you back, and that's always a drain on the resources."

Neil just stared at him as if he had completely lost his marbles.

"Right, I got it now." The Doctor turned to him, smiling contently that he had finally been able to crack it. "Tell me, did you by any change meet me on planet 19911744AA?"

"Hang on." Neil said after a short pause. "What the heck is going on here?"

6.

The Doctor stopped dead in his track when his eyes fell on the cable nearest to him. It might have been that he had already failed to notice it once or twice or even a hundred times before, but he wouldn't be able to find out after such a long time. The thing that mattered was that he noticed it now. The black smear on the outer casing caught his attention. All the other cables had been covered by a grey layer of dust, but none of them had been burnt.

He slapped his head hard. Wondering how he could have been so boneheadedly stupid. The warnings in the ancient language scribbled outside on the wooden doors stirred his memory like a horde of bees awakening from winter's sleep.

"The nightmare child." He muttered quietly to himself. "Nightfall brings monsters out of these cursed stones." His voice gained in volume as his mind kept working, discovering new details that he had overlooked. "That's the fear we experienced. The Master and Rassilon, the centipedes and the flesh-eating monsters. But what comes next? What comes after FEAR? For we have made his prison be. Every step away from the." He grabbed the cable with both hands and grimaced before he swirled around to face the others. "Oh Aurelia." He lamented. "The girl named after the brightest of lights in the dark polar sky, please do me a favour and call me a pompous, self-righteous idiot!"

"You ARE an idiot." Aurelia said quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor.

"What's the matter Doctor?" Will asked worriedly.

"She was right! Aurelia had been right all the time. This staircase is endless! We've been going around in bloody circles." He showed him the damaged cable. "We were here when I tapped into the mainframe. The plastic casing has melted from the wire when the sparks hit me. We haven't moved."

"But…how's that possible?"

"My people were really ingenious, top notch creative with time and space. They could alter it to their own preferences, like how the tower is larger in the inside." He noticed the look of confusion on Will's face. "Just imagine that space is a piece of paper, with us on the stairs in corner A and the top of the stairs in corner B. Running up from A to B is completely logical and feasible. However, when the Timelords alter the very fabric of space by bending corner A and making it join to a point C somewhere in the line between A and B, you'll get a loop, a sort of wormhole shortcut. You start from point A and end up in point A, circling around continuously, but you'll never be able to reach the top of the stairs. That's what the inscriptions warned us about. That's how they keep the prisoner trapped inside. He can't get down the stairs and no one can get up there to set him free."

"But, can't we at least go back down?" Will asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "Point A isn't on the ground floor. It's somewhere in the middle of this cursed staircase."

"But there has to be a way." Will panicked. "We can't just be stuck here."

"If we could just find the joint." The Doctor muttered. "The exact location where point A and C are connected together. I could try to rip a hole through it and we could go to the other side. Only…"

"Only-What?!"

"It could be tiny." The Doctor sighed, and sank down through his knees. "It could be absolutely minute. Just a microscopic spot that's dangling somewhere in the middle of the air between here and nowhere. It would be impossible to find."

"So we're screwed then." Aurelia commented in a matter of fact voice.

"Unless…unless we could use some sort of link that connects us to the outside." The Doctor jumped back up, his eyes flashing with sudden determination. "The cables run all the way to the top, but I can't use the cables. They are sealed off after I tried to tinker with the signal. Now what else can I use?! Think! Doctor. THINK! What else is there?"

The Master.

The Master might provide the connection.

"Doctor?" Will came over to him, but the Doctor put his finger on his lips and shushed. "No, don't! Don't make a sound."

He realized that it was a long shot. He didn't even know for sure that the Master really was the prisoner of the tower, or even that he was still alive. He had tried before, as soon as they set foot in this place, to detect his presence, but so far he had failed to pick up even the faintest whiff of him. But perhaps he shouldn't have relied on his sense of smell alone.

He closed his eyes and listened.

There, hidden in the turmoil that was the frightened rattle of his human companion's hearts and the noise of vermin scuttling away on their spidery legs between the cracks and corners of the stone walls, covered up by the steady drip of leaking pipelines and the electric buzz of the sleeping cables dreaming their electronic dreams, at the spot where the damaged cable crossed another in an X shaped fashion and three steps at his right, there it was. A faint tapping in the familiar rhythm of four, calling to him through the joint from the other side.

His eyes snapped open. "Found it." He breathed with great relief and rushed over to the exact spot. He heard it. He heard the Master. This wasn't just a dead echo from the white point stars. The Master was here, sending out these signals. He was up in the tower. He was alive. With his hearts fluttering inside his chests, and with an excited energy buzzing through his limbs, he whizzed the sonic screwdriver over the invisible joint. The fabric of reality danced and rippled as a beautiful blue membrane appeared, bathing the Doctor in a soft glow.

"There is the hole in the joint!" The Doctor yelled. Suddenly the sound became so much louder. A banging noise, as if something collided with metal. "Now go through it quickly! It's not staying stable forever." He guided Aurelia through the portal, followed by Neil before he jumped through the blue membrane himself to the other side.

7.

The Doctor's sneakers just touched the ground before the portal closed behind him, shrinking in size till it disappeared without leaving so much as an indication where it had been. They had arrived in a well-lit dome-shaped room at the top of the flight of stairs. In the middle was a round platform, connected to where they were standing by a narrow stone bridge. The Doctor looked down into the pit. From up here, there was no way someone couldn't see down to the bottom, for in between hovered a dense formation of white clouds, creating the ridiculous illusion that they had climbed all the way up to heaven. An enormous metal scaffold stood in the middle. The iron legs were secured to the floor with large bolts. It held up a large cage that hung from a set of rusted chains over the edge of the platform. It swung faintly from side to side, making an eerie squeaking noise.

"What's that strange banging sound?" Aurelia muttered. She and Will could both hear it now. It came from the hanging cage.

The cables that ran across the wall crossed the domed ceiling and gathered right in the middle into one single cable. It suspended downwards into the cage where it disappeared. The Doctor hurried forward. For some reason, this whole setting where they found themselves in summoned up memories of the time he was kept inside that tiny little birdcage by the Master.

Behind bars that were so rusted to the core that they had actually turned black, lay a man huddled on the bottom of the cage.

His frame was wasted to almost nothing. His chest was but a barrel of ribs, his cheekbones protruded from his face while his eyes were sunken deep inside his skull. He was caked with filth. The last threads of fabric that had once covered his body had rotten away many years ago. Chains that ran through iron rings bolted to the platform were fastened around his ankles and wrists, leaving angry red wounds. The Doctor noticed with horror how a heavy metal collar had been fastened around the prisoner's neck, and had cut through the i skin till on same parts, it had worn down right into the muscle tissue. The cable that was connected to all of the others ran into the collar and was wired up to a metal socket implanted into the back of the prisoner's neck.

His eyes were shut, as if he was asleep, but his head rocked back and forth, and hit the filthy metal grid on the bottom of cage.

The Doctor squatted down in front of him.

"Master?" His hearts broke. How long had he been kept in here? How long had he been suffering like this?

"Master? Can you hear me?"

"Oh please, make him stop." Aurelia whispered, horrified when she saw the wet patch of blood that bloomed at the side of his head. "I can't bear it. Doctor, make him stop."

The Doctor rushed to the entrance of the cage and found that door was not locked. He climbed inside on his hands and knees over the filth-stained floor till his was by the Master's side. Cradling his head in his arms to stop him from hurting himself, he leaned forward with his lips almost touching his forehead.

"Master. I'm here.' He whispered. "I came back."

He studied his face, but the deadened expression that bordered on catatonia didn't change.

"Can you hear me? Please. Please Master. Please."

This was his fault. Why didn't he find him earlier? Why was he such a complete failure? For all the humans he had saved, all the incredible things he had done, every planet and star that was still up there in the sky because of him, what good was all of that if he couldn't save the Master from own destruction?

"He can't answer you."

Tearful, the Doctor gazed up at a man who had suddenly appeared. He wore his coat and jacket, his sneakers and his trousers. He looked exactly like him. "He can't even hear you." The man continued. "The neurological connections that serve his senses are all damaged."

"W-who are you?" The Doctor furrowed his brows. Then he noticed Neil who was waving at him from the other side of the bars. The others rushed over to their lost teammate. Overtaken by joy, they hugged him tightly in their arms.

"But h-how?"

"It's okay Doctor!" Neil explained. "He's a hologram who runs this place. I was about to fall into the pit when he saved me."

"I'm not exactly a hologram." The other Doctor further elucidated. "I'm a program who can be visualized in a hologram form to be more precise, and I don't run this place. I wish. My Master controls this place."

"Your master?"

The other Doctor nodded his head at the unconscious prisoner resting in his arms. "He controls this place. Or at least for as much as he is still capable to do so in his ruined state." He gazed at the Doctor with what could only be described as star-struck admiration in his eyes. "You must be the Doctor. I'm so glad to finally meet you. You must have noticed how my Master has created me in your image." He took the Doctor's hand and shook it enthusiastically. "It's an honour sir. I've seen so many good things that you've done through my Master's memories. He hated you for it of course, but since my personality matrix is also based on your character, I can only applaud all of your tireless heroic achievements."

"The Master, HE created you?"

"Yes he did." The other Doctor said with a broad grin.

"Why did he create YOU?" The Doctor blurted. "I mean, no offence, but I thought he hated me."

"Yes, well. He doesn't." The other Doctor paused, visibly confused by the question. "You know, I've spend the last 1445 years taking care of him and still I'm not sure what he thinks of me, I mean _you_." He nervously jumped on his toes. "But he needs you, I'm sure about that."

He squatted down beside the Doctor, noticing his distress. "And right now, he needs you more than ever."

"Did you do this to him?"

The other Doctor grimly shook his head.

"Then who did this?!" The Doctor asked, his voice rising with his anger. "Why is he wired up like this? Who chained him down like a dog, and who put him in this bloody cage and threw away the key?!"

"I don't know who locked him up in here. I wasn't here when it happened, and he keeps that part of his memory hidden from me. Maybe he has forgotten about it because of his madness, or perhaps he has wiped it from his mind intentionally. With him you can never be quite sure about these things." He gazed worriedly at the Master. "The wires were his idea. They were there even before he created me. It's part of his support system. It's how he has survived all these hundreds of years. Still, he couldn't prevent that his physical form has wasted away." He gazed up at the numerous bundles of cables that ran over the ceiling. "He tried to keep himself sane by creating a simulation that would keep his brains occupied, a fake reality within his mind that he could control and retreat into. Facing two thousand years of solitude with nothing but your own nightmares to keep you company, it was the sanest thing someone in his position could do."

"You're telling me that he made you? Because you were suppose to keep him _sane_?"

"Oh yes, and I failed, I failed miserably." The other Doctor sighed. "There is something about what you two experienced when you both were still children, back on Gallifrey, that makes him trust you more than anyone else in the entire universe. He even trusts you with his own life. He chose you to guard over him, knowing that one day, his mind would start to fail him, and he would need someone to help him survive."

"How long has he been like this?" The Doctor asked while the other Doctor's words weighed heavily on his shoulders.

"Two hundred, two hundred and forty years perhaps. No use in counting the days in this place, they just melt silently into weeks, and the weeks into years. The last time he seemed lucid, and said anything that made sense…" The other Doctor paused for a moment and looked away. "It's been so long, I can't even remembered when he said it. But I remember that he stared at me with that look in his eyes." He gazed at the Doctor. "He knew. He was still aware what was happening to him, he knew that everything inside him was shutting down and that little by little he was dying. He was so afraid to die alone, but he didn't want to show it, not to you."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said that he forgive me. For leaving."

The Doctor swallowed an awful lump that got stuck inside his throat.

"I'm not exactly sure what it meant. I've never been allowed to follow him when he retreats to that specific part of his past. He keeps that from me too." The virtual Doctor quietly studied the tears that ran down the real Doctor's face. "But at least it seems to mean something to you."

"It's my fault." The Doctor admitted. "I should have been there for him. He needed me and I ran away, left him on his own, alone with those drums assaulting his mind. I should have stayed, but I couldn't because…because I was scared. The Master was right. I am a coward. Never been anything else. And now…" The Doctor broke down in sobs, rocking the Master in his arms.

"And now, perhaps you could stop running, stop being a coward, and help him as you should have."

The Doctor choked back his tears and looked at his digital clone. "What do mean? How can I be of any help to him now?"

"He's not lost. Not yet. You can still reach him. In here." The other Doctor tapped on his forehead. "Over the years I've tried to bring him back many times. I've written programs on my own, ran every combination that was possible within my coding matrix to help him to recover consciousness. I've tried to lead him to the memories that were the most benign to him, the recollections of his father, and the days he passed on the Academy together with you. But it was of no use, he resisted every prospect to recovery, corrupted every chance of finding redemption. Every time I tried to save him, he retreated further away into the most horrible parts of his memories, and he came out worse than when he started. The last program I ran as a final attempt to get him back was a complete disaster, and might have brought him to the brink of what his mind could still tolerate."

He stared quietly at his creator, like his human counterpart, the blame he felt for failing him strained his hearts.

"He doesn't believe he deserves any better, you know." He said, after a long pause. "It's his guilt. It keeps him away from anything that could offer him his salvation."

He turned to the Doctor. Over the years, he had helplessly watched the Master spiralling down, his madness claiming the last of his spirit, till there was almost nothing left but a hollow shell. He didn't wish to see this to go on.

"I've tried." He explained in an attempt to justify his failings. "I really did. I've tried everything that was in my capacity. But I'm only a program, composed of ones and zeros, fixed in a coding matrix with a limited number of possibilities. But you, you're my living counterpart. The real Doctor, made of flesh and blood. What your mind can come up with is… is _limitless_, I know that, because I've seen what a brilliant but damaged mind like that of my Master could do."

He looked straight at the Doctor, a renewed glint of resolve burning in his eyes.

"Imagine what a sound and equally brilliant mind like yours could do for him, Doctor."

_**TBC**_

**_As always, please review and comment on the story if it pleases you. You could also visit my author's profile and take a look at the soundtrack of the story._**


	9. Chapter 9

_Thanks to Bronze Cortina for pointing out the odd spelling and grammar mistakes!_

**Redemption**

1.

He leaned closer to him, the Master's head cradled in his hands, his forehead almost touching his. He turned to his digital clone for the last before he began.

"Keep the others safe." He ordered.

The other Doctor just nodded.

The Doctor let his mind collide with that of the Master's.

He had prepared himself to enter a world of chaos, to find the simulation corrupted by the Master's madness.

He had been inside the Master's mind before, back on Earth, back in the wastelands, where the Master had begged him to listen to the drums inside his head. Knowing the very extent of his insanity, he had dreaded to see it, but at that time he had been too weak to pull away. The things he came to know of the Master, they still haunted him to this very day. The Doctor had descended into a perverted cesspit of debauchery, the dwelling of a deranged, sadistic monster that did not care and could not care for anything or anyone. A mad, damaged, soul who would stand at the end of time and watch over the destruction of the universe, laughing while it burnt. In the background of all of that had been the drums. Always the drums. Those four wicked beats had been everywhere inside the Master's mind as his sole remaining purpose of existence.

But that was then.

Now, Everything seemed to have changed.

The Doctor walked alone in an abandoned mental asylum through a long stretch of corridor that had a seasick green vinyl floor and an endless row of doors. He didn't need to open any of them to know that there was nothing on the other side. The digital Doctor had explained to him that he would reverse to the last of the simulations in which the Master was still lucid, but that he had to keep the complexity of this virtual reality to a minimum, otherwise he wouldn't be able to sustain it. He had also emphasized that the Master's troubled mind wouldn't allow it to exist like this for long, and that the Doctor had only a limited amount of time.

When he reached the end of the corridor and faced the last room at the back, he finally sensed him. Behind the closed door, he picked up the Master's presence like the cold vibration of static after a summer storm. He unlocked the door and went inside.

An empty room with whitewashed walls. A lonely figure dressed in a white hospital robe sat huddled in a corner. His face was hidden between his knees. His arms were crossed over his head and clutching his short-cropped hair in despair.

"Master?"

No response, but the hands fluttered nervously, tapping on his head and counting to four.

"Master?" He came over to him.

"Why?" The Master whispered down into the shadows. "Why did you do this?"

"Do what?" The Doctor asked gently, and squatted down in front of him.

"Why did you change it all back?" He glared at him from behind his hands.

"I didn't change it back. The other Doctor did." He wasn't sure that the Master comprehended anything he was telling him, but he was relieved to see that it at least triggered a response. The Master lowered his hands, finally showing his face.

"I'm the Doctor. The real one." He said, almost embarrassedly. "Koshei, it's me, Theta."

The Master's eyes fluttered, exchanging the vacant stare with something that deemed to be a sign of recognition, or so the Doctor hoped.

"You can't be." He stared at him, eyes wide and unblinking. A demented smile slowly crept over his cracked lips. "No, no, no, no, no. You can't."

"It's me." The Doctor replied, softly. "It's really me."

The Master shook his head ferociously. "No, no, no, no! You can't. Don't you even dare to pretend to be him!" He leaned forward till their heads were touching. He breathed in the Doctor's smell and shut his eyes. The aching familiarity of his presence puzzled his damaged mind and stirred up anguish in his hearts. His eyes snapped open and he recoiled from the Doctor's side. "You can't." He whimpered, turning to the white wall and hiding his face again. "Can't be. Can't be you."

"Master. It's me. It's really me. I crossed the universe to find you. I used the white point star that was left behind and it guided me all the way here."

"You're just numbers. Ones and zeros. Zeros and ones. The other Doctor. The other Doctor left. You left lifetimes ago."

"But I came back. I came back for you. Master, you have to snap out of this. Heaven knows how you survived all these years, but you have to come with me. I'll get you out of this tower. I'll set you free."

"Free?" He asked, as if the concept eluded him completely.

"You're a prisoner. Not in here, not just inside this made-up place, this asylum. That's just your own unforgiving imagination dealing with your guilt. You're trapped inside the tower. Remember that dark tower the elders used to send you when we were children, whenever you did something wrong? It looks like that, exactly like that. I just don't know who locked you up in here. I don't know what happened to you. But for what's it worth, I'm sorry. I truly am sorry for not getting here any sooner. At least let me make it up to you. Let me help."

"You can't help me." He said softly.

"Why can't I help?"

"No one can. Not even the real Doctor."

The Master gazed back in the Doctor's eyes. The way he looked at him. It struck the Doctor how different he was from the last time he had seen him. Gone was the hatred, the rage, and the vengeful insanity. And yes, he was still mad, and he was still afraid and too stubborn to admit it, but there was also a sort of clarity of mind, a sadness in his calm, as if he was facing a condemned man who had resigned to his fate. And then he noticed. The drumming inside his friend's head. It was gone.

"Master, where are the drums?" He asked, alarmed.

The Master raised his brows and looked up at the ceiling. "Yes, it's very quiet in here, isn't it? It always is."

"This makes no sense. They should be here. I've heard them. Those four taps, they were burnt inside your brain. It can't be just wiped from your mind by your illness, however serious it is. It cannot be forgotten. Rassilon made sure of that. Why aren't they here?"

The Master clutched his head in distress, pressing his hands flat on his ears.

"What is it?" The Doctor looked at him worriedly. "Can't you tell me? Master, please."

"Cut it."

"What?"

"They cut it. They sliced and chopped and tore it away from me." The Master mumbled as he began to rock his body back and forth. "I can't hear it anymore. I can't." Sadness strained his voice. "Why would they do this? I don't understand."

"Who did?!" The Doctor asked. "Master who did this to you? Who took the drums from you?"

"It was supposed to be a gift." The Master continued, unaware of the Doctor's rising anxiety. "I was worthy of it. The drums told me so. Why would they take it back?"

The Doctor's hearts turned to stone when he realized what the Master was trying to tell him. "The Timelord elders. Did they do this you?" He pressed on. "Master, you have to tell me. Otherwise I can't help you. Tell me what happened."

The Master kept staring back at him with sad and frightened eyes, unable to speak.

"Or if you can't, show me. Show me then what happened. Please."

The Master didn't respond, but after a long silence, the wall behind them crumbled, as the matrix of the simulation broke open. Bricks tumbled down, creating a large opening that let a blinding light flood into the room.

The Doctor stood up and peered into the light through the hole to the other side, but he could see nothing but vast empty fields of white. He glanced down at the Master.

"Don't go in there." The Master pleaded in a frail voice, caught in a rare moment of lucidity. He remembered what had happened the last time he showed anyone he cared for his true self. The thought of letting the Doctor inside filled him with dread.

"I'll come back for you."

Wretchedly, the Master shook his head. "No…you won't."

"I promise." The Doctor crossed his hearts, then stepped through the opening and into the Master's memories.

2.

He saw the world through the Master's eyes.

Never had the Doctor experienced such rage.

He found the drums. They swelled on to a thunderous noise, pounding inside his head like a sickening migraine, a throbbing swollen cancer that ordered him to kill. Kill that man who had destroyed his life. Murder that pompous, magniloquent, vainglorious horseshit bastard of a Lord president. The vile hypocrite who deemed him diseased and unworthy of existence, but who was responsible, and who had created him, made him into the monster that he was.

Counting.

One, and the blast sent Rassilon reeling back into the portal. The threatening glow of his gauntlet dimmed as his life's energy was sucked back into his injured body.

Two, and the Lord president was on the floor, kneeling in front of him, gasping in wonderful agony.

Three. The portal closed behind them, the Doctor, the Naismith mansion, Earth, all disappearing, fading into white. The horrified look on Rassilion's face, as he realized that his only hope for survival had vanished with them.

He had so little strength left. His body was exhausted, barely able to sustain his solid form. He became aware of his trembling hands, the skin flashing to bone and back again. Then the pain cut through him like a knife. Just one more. Let him hold on for just a little longer.

Even if it would kill him.

He fired, all his anger and hurt focussed into one shot, the last of his life's energy. Please, he begged, let me at least have my revenge.

Then all of this could end.

Four.

The bolt of raw energy hit Rassilon in his hearts, and with the little power that was left the Master forced them to stop beating. The Lord president face paled. His eyes rolled back.

Almost, oh so very achingly close to resolution.

The agony that suddenly sliced through his body was excruciating. Ripping him wide open from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, it drained him from all his strength. He dropped on his knees, bending double, gasping for air. His anger was blocked by the violent pain that coursed through his veins like a flood of tiny needles. The Master fell down on the floor, and watched how Timelord soldiers appeared out of the dark void and rushed over to their wounded Lord president.

He shut his eyes.

_Please. Please let him die._

He heard a gasp and a wheezing sound as Rassilon filled his lungs with air, followed by the cries of relief coming from his followers.

The Master sucked in a harsh breath into his ruined body, and forced back his unwanted tears.

His body was broken, damaged beyond healing.

Rassilon's face loomed over him. How unfair! How quickly it seemed that that serpent-headed bastard was restored! All of his rage and sacrifice to achieve some kind of justice had not left that monstrous man with a single scar. And yet, the Master himself was dying. The flesh on his fingers disappeared, leaving the whitewashed bones underneath, it felt like a million shards were cutting away the muscles and severing the tendons. Rassilon looked down at him coldly. He raised his staff and wrenched it down on the Master's dying hand. He let out a whimper. His limbs trembled in agony.

"You vile, disgusting beast." Rassilon hissed with his fury no longer concealed behind his thin patrician mask. He spat on the Master's face. "You - You and the Doctor. You have DESTROYED US!"

They dragged his dying body outside onto a balcony facing the courtyard. Lost in pain, dazed by the harsh light and surrounded by a blizzard of voices, he was only half aware that Rassilon was addressing the huge crowd that waited anxiously beneath the tower.

The Lord president raised his staff towards the orange burnt sky. "The link with Earth is broken!"

Desperate cries erupted from the crowd below. Rassilon continued in a steady voice, forcing himself to stay in control till the very end.

"We can no longer escape our fate. Today is a black day. Today, all of Galifrey will perish. None of us will survive."

Chaos broke out. People were running away from the Citadel's tower, desperate to return home. Others stayed and clung onto strangers, tearful and paralyzed with fear. Families hugged their loved ones, whispering their farewell to each other. And then there were those who were angry, and would not leave this world without appeasing that burning sense of wrong of being dealt such a violent and short life without murdering a scapegoat.

"Lord president." Someone yelled up to the elder. "Who is that man that your guards have seized?"

Rassilon turned to the Master, whose face began to drain of colour. "That." He said in a voice so full of anger that it remained hardly under his control. "Is the infamous beast who has condemned Gallifrey. The Master is responsible for breaking the link. He is the one who has sent us all to our deaths."

Cries of outrage came from the crowd.

"Is that true?!"

"Is that the Master? That wicked child who became insane and murdered his own father?"

"Kill him! Kill that monster!"

"No! Make him suffer!"

"Make him burn!"

Rassilon studied the enraged mob, screaming up to the sky for the Master's blood. There was no integrity, no mercy, and no pride in their actions. In the final days of the Timewar in which the Timelords had finally lost their struggle to survive, it seemed that all of them had gone mad.

"It seems that the crowd wants you to stay." He stated coldly. "At least long enough to make you pay."

He gripped the Master's chin with his one hand that was sheathed in the gauntlet. The blue metal slowly started to glow. "I can understand their mindless bloodlust. For why should you, YOU, of all of us, be allowed a peaceful death, while far better men than you have to burn?"

The Lord president placed his sheathed hand flat on his captive's chest. The Master's eyes snapped open as Rassilon's life energy rushed into his dying body.

"Stay lord Master." The elder said, his voice malicious and vengeful. "Stay and BURN with us!"

3.

He restored him.

The evil bastard restored him. Right before the Doctor was going to pull the plug on everything and send every living, stinking Timelord and Dalek to meet their maker by killing them all in a blazing sea of fire.

But that was not enough. That would mean a normal death, considering the crazy circumstances. No, he was meant to suffer, because he really did piss off Rassilon. It didn't matter that it was actually the Doctor who had severed the link. He wasn't here for the Lord president's convenience, to be tortured or maimed to satisfy his perverted, sadistic nature. So it had to be him. It had to be the Master, and Rassilon, the almighty Lord president, the first of his race, could do oh so much, to make him wish that he had died a little faster back in the black void chamber.

Rassilon had sealed his soul into his flesh and bones, inscribed his essence into his hated body. The Master could regenerate no more. Still he could heal. He could heal almost as quickly as the soldiers could inflict the wounds. The bruises faded from red to black to purple within an hour. The broken bones mended almost visibly under his skin. The hideous slashes of the whip closed themselves while they released him from his chains and dragged him back to Rassilon who was waiting for him in the top of the tower.

They tossed him down in front of his feet. With hooded eyes, he saw the Lord president approach.

"Still with us, lord Master?"

The Master coughed and spat out a lump of coagulated blood that had dripped from his broken nose into his mouth.

"I could imagine that under these painful circumstances, a body that has accelerated healing capacities like yours, would rather be a curse than a blessing."

He stared at the Master and was content to recognize the fear that flashed in the younger Timelord's eyes.

Rassilon leaned towards him, his mouth drawn in disgust. "I am immortal. What else would happen when I restore a Timelord? Even if it's a diseased little worm like you."

The Master gasped weakly, barely able to speak.

"Can you imagine what would happen now when the Doctor uses the Moment? What, do you think, would happen to Gallifrey's most infamous child?" A cruel, icy smile played on his lips.

"Contemplate this while your mind is still capable. Would he burn for eternity, or would he be reduced to ash with his consciousness trapped in the ruined matter to be scattered over the universe? Would that thin cloud of dust still be able to hold a single thought? Would it know what it has become? What do you think, lord Master?"

For the first time since they had passed through the portal, the Master saw the fear that burnt behind the Lord president's restrained composure.

Rassilon, who was the only Timelord in existence who was truly immortal, was afraid of dying, because for him, death wouldn't be the end. If the Timelords had ever developed a religion, and they had created things like God, and angels and demons, and a heaven and hell, the type of existence that Rassilon feared to be reduced to once Gallifrey was destroyed, was nothing less horrific than one of eternal suffering in hell itself.

And Rassilon had chosen to pass this most gruesome fate on to the Master.

"I've expected you to understand." Rassilon said as he watched how the Master struggled to get up, his fists clenched in anger, but his battered body was still failing him.

"Someone had to pay for Gallifrey's destruction, and for mine."

A cruel smile appeared on the Lord president's face.

"Consider it as a parting gift. In exchange for the one that I'm going to take back from you."

"W-what?"

"My lord Master. Even if after all that I have done to you, your final suffering wouldn't be much of a punishment. To be condemned to share the fate of the most noble Timelord in existence, the greatest warlord of Time, the founding father of Gallifrey? How could you consider that as a punishment? How could it appease me to know that a mindless, insane creature like you, unworthy of even being a Timelord, is after his death no better no off than ME? How is that JUSTICE?"

The Master coiled back when the Rassilon reached out and seized his head, pressing his fingers into the sides of his skull.

"There is none. Unless I balance it out. Unless, I create it myself. You, lord Master, who thinks in his insanity that he has become the drums, and the drums has become all that he is. You will have to learn to live on after death without it."

"No! No! Don't!" The Master crawled back, struggling to pull himself out of Rassilon's grip. It was too late. Rassilon entered his mind, pushing into him like a charging bull, and destroying everything to get near the link that he had implanted into the Master's mind. He found it, and as if he was a vulture with knifelike claws, he cut it out of him.

"The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away." The Lord president whispered. He threw the tiny tumour-like nodule that had absorbed the drumbeat signals and had been growing inside the insane Timelord's brain before his feet, squashing it under his boot. He left the chamber, leaving the Master rolling over the floor, screaming and sobbing like a mad animal.

4.

It shouldn't be long now.

Oh please, don't let it take any longer.

They had put him in a cage in the top of the tower. They had lit a great fire underneath, heating it up till the iron grid at the bottom was scorching hot. He couldn't get away from the heat. They had chained him down like a dog, and where ever he came in contact with the hellish metal, blisters the size of oranges ballooned up, and his skin melted away. Horrific burns covered every bare spot on his knees, his feet, his legs, his arms and hands. Writhing and twitching in pain, he kept rolling his body from one side of the cage to the other like a demented lab rat to keep from setting himself ablaze. Pieces of burned skin that tore off from the flesh became stuck on the grid and quickly turned to black soot.

The agony he was going through was unbearable, maddening.

The sickening smell of his own burning flesh filled his nostrils.

He caught Rassilon in his peripheral vision, overseeing his sadistic punishment through the iron bars that scalded black. His expression remained cold and merciless. Lips unmoving, he could still hear Rassilon's thoughts loud and clear.

_Juctice, Lord Master. _

His grey, unblinking eyes burned in the shadows. It was that last image of the Rassilon, his brutal creator, which would remain locked inside the Master's mind forever.

_JUCTICE._

His vision compromised by the intense heat, the hated Timelord drifted out of focus, as if he was swallowed by the dark.

Left alone, the torment continued.

He screamed till his vocal-cords were ripped to shreds. He should have died from his horrific injuries, but his flesh kept healing itself. It was Rassilon's immortality turned into a curse, the most vicious, beastly kind of torture. He wished that the Doctor would just do what he was supposed to do and end it. Blast Gallifrey from the sky, and turn his tormented body into atoms to be dispatched over the cold void of space. He didn't care what he would become, as long as that awful burning, that searing, scalding heat would cease.

He was unsure how long he had suffered, but at the end there was a voice, a woman's voice, wise and kind, that called to him.

Vision blurred and with his senses dazed by the pain, he could see no more than a figure dressed in red. Five other figures were standing at the back. Then the cage moved.

He was removed from the fire.

Someone cut lose his chains, then opened the door and dragged him out. He collapsed on the floor, the touch of the damp stones was like merciful rain on his scorched and blistered skin, and calmed down the agony of his horrific wounds.

"Lord Master."

The voice struck him with familiarity. Drifting back into consciousness, his fluttering eyes revealed the blurry vision of an elderly Lady. To the Master, who had suffered so much, she had the face of the most gracious of angels.

He opened and closed his mouth in an effort to speak, but his cracked lips split painfully, and his voice was hoarse, inaudible.

The woman kneeled by his side. Her face was old and wise. Her grey-green eyes looked down at him, kind and compassionate. He moaned softly when she touched his forehead, comforting him. "It's all right." She whispered, and listened to his mind.

He had only one thought. One hateful, crimson-red name that flashed through his mind.

_RASSILON_

She gazed at him. "The Lord president has sealed himself inside his mausoleum, awaiting his doom. The rest of the Lord counsels are no more. Frightened of what is to come, most of them have taken their own lives. The citadel is abandoned, except for a few of us. "

He blinked his eyes. The surroundings were slowly falling back into focus, and he noticed the small group of Timelords standing in the back. Their faces hidden in the shadow, the adorned bright crimson robes they wore identified them as high counsel members. He gazed back at her. There was something about his gracious angel. He thought he knew her. He knew her from long ago.

"I'm sorry we've let this happen to you, but we were powerless, until now. "

Although overcome by the pain, he forced himself to concentrate to communicate with her.

_He said that I was to share his fate. That I will burn for eternity, and that my mind will be trapped in ashes._ The Master gazed at her with large, frightened eyes.

"Gallifrey has a cruel master. Rassilon has locked you away in this tower, because he wants you to burn and suffer. His last vindictive act of revenge towards the man who he believed had robbed him of everything."

The woman gently stroked the Master's hair, comforting him as she sensed the dread and despair in his hearts.

"I know what you think. I know how frightened you are. But you must not despair. This shall be our ending, but not yours. Rassilon was wrong about you. You're not just his victim, nor his pawn in his perverted game of trying to regain control over his doomed fate. My lord Master, your destiny does not lie in the four beats of maddening drums, nor in the glowing heart of a shattered white point star."

Gently, she took his burnt hand and held it. Images flashed through the Master's mind, fragile but strong like the flapping wings of a butterfly caught in a storm. He saw a lonely prisoner, locked away in a dark Tower that was buried in a sea of diamonds, followed by a black planet with a crimson sky, disappearing into a black hole. He saw the old man who was with the Doctor in Naismith mansion, and a woman with flaming red hair and attitude to match, an army of Judoon soldiers, a man dressed in a grey suit with cobalt eyes that looked right into your soul, A Roman feast with three sisters, bickering with each other as they stirred in a huge cauldron filled with human bones, a woman with bright green eyes, handing him a scythe, its curved blade so thin that it was almost translucent. And through all of this, he was running.

He was running with the Doctor.

Her hand pulled away, and the glimpses into his future stopped. He gazed back at her, bewildered by the revelation.

She smiled at him. "You see lord Master. There is good reason to keep faith. Your story does not end here. The good Doctor, he won't allow it."

She glanced back at the others. "It is foretold that we will die today, but we will not die as cowards, and perish in vain like our Lord president or the high Lords of the counsel. Enough suffering had been caused by Rassilon's arrogance and selfishness."

She rose up slowly. "We cannot set you free." She said ruefully. "Nor can we stop the Doctor from ending the Timewar with our annihilation. But we can still save you, lord Master. We can transform Rassilon's prison into an a sanctuary that would protect you from the destruction of our world."

Standing tall and dignified, she turned to the other remaining high counsel members. "The crystals are placed, and the Ark is singing its final song." She raised her staff in the air, and the others followed swiftly.

"On this last day of the Timewar, this relentless war that had been filled with madness and greed, in which we have done so much wrong to so many, let our final act be one of redemption. Let our deaths be a sacrifice that saves rather than destroys."

She looked down at the Master with a resolved look in her eyes. The white point star at the tip of her staff started to glow in a golden light.

"We will give our life force to raise the Ark and seal you within, so that you might live."

A bright white light erupted, bathing her and her companions in swirling clouds of golden stardust. Six lonely figures, standing tall with their crimson robes flapping in the air, proud and dignified, like the Timelords of old. Faint streams of plasma blue beams poured from their chests, and joined the unnatural golden cloud, which grew bigger and stronger till it swept up into a vortex of pure and furious light. She glanced down at him one last time, eyes shining with sorrow, but still so very determined.

"Farewell my lord Master, remember us few. Don't let our existence and that of the Timelord race been but a futile dream."

_Wait… _He raised himself up to catch a glimpse of her. Beneath him, the ground began to shake violently.

_Who are you?_

"I was the Doctor's guarding angel." A sad smile curled the corners of her lips. "And now I shall be yours." A single tear glided down her cheek. "One day, when he finally comes, please tell him…tell him that" She paused for a moment. The others had disappeared, and only her face, beautiful and serene, was still visible against the sea of white.

_Tell him what?_ He asked, devoted to do something back for her.

She shook head. There were no words that needed to be spoken.

"He will see. He knows."

And then the light swallowed her whole.

5.

Slowly, the Doctor retreated out of the Master's mind.

"She saved you!" He muttered, his hearts aching. "She! She and the others, they gave their lives so you could live."

He was back in the whitewashed cell inside the asylum simulation. The Master sat apposite of him. Huddled with his back against the wall, he stared at him with large, remorseful eyes.

"I didn't ask her to… I didn't understand why she did it. I still don't."

The Doctor turned his eyes on the walls. The memory of her before the light washed her noble features away still burned in his mind.

"She shouldn't have saved me." The Master breathed, his guilt shining through his insanity. "She could have picked any other man, or sealed herself inside the Ark. There was no reason to save me. No reason."

"She knew." The Doctor whispered as his mourning spirit returned to full awareness. "She knew I was going to look for you." He gazed at his anxious friend. "Master." He said gently. "You don't need to feel guilty. Not for this. She would have been lost, even if she had not used her life-force to protect you." His voice broke. He reached out to the Master who shamefully recoiled back from his touch. "Koshei. It's all right. I understand now. I know what happened to you. This tower isn't a prison. It's a safe heaven, built by the last of the Timelord counsel to preserve you. They had used their life force to activate the diamonds in the lake. The vibrations of the white point stars amplified by the Ark created a distortion in the fabric of reality that sealed you inside this tiny bubble, protecting you while outside the blazing fires raged and Gallifrey was turned to ash."

The Master shook his head, and pressed his hands on his ears to shut out the Doctor. "No reason. No reason." He rambled. "No reason and no use!"

"But why is there no use? Didn't you see it? Master, don't you remember what she showed you? You were meant to survive the destruction of the Timewar. You were meant to be here, with me."

The Master gazed up, their eyes locked.

A sad smile appeared on the Doctor's lips. "Yes, that's right, you and me, the last two Timelords in existence."

"I can't." The Master continued to shake his head. I can't go with you."

"What do you mean?" Suddenly, the Master's mad stubbornness evoked a deed sense of dread in him.

For a long time, the Master remained silent. Then he began to recite the words that were inscribed at the entrance of the tower.

"Inside these labyrinth walls. Here sleeps the nightmare child who lies alone. When the darkness falls, his dreams draw monsters out of these cursed stones. For we have made his prison be, every step away from the."

"-And this child we would destroy, if you tried to set him free." The Doctor finished, as the cold realization cut into him like a blade of steel. "The warnings inscribed on the entrance doors." He whispered, as his mind continued to unravel the disastrous truth. "The Ark has been created around you. So you're the only one who can sustain it. Without you locked away inside, the whole structure would destabilize and the bubble would burst. That would set you free, only the gravity of the tower and the lake are what has kept the remains of Gallifrey from falling into the ravenous heart of the black hole. So if you were ever released from the tower and trigger its destruction –"

"I would die." The Master finished, more lucid than the Doctor had ever seen him since their current encounter. "Taking with me every unfortunate idiot who happened to be here at the time." He shot a meaningful glance at the Doctor.

"You knew this." The Doctor whispered, shocked by the realization. "Those chains I saw around your neck and wrists. You did that to yourself."

"I had to find a way to keep myself inside the tower. My mind was wandering…my head…Doctor my head. You don't know. You weren't there. Without the drums the silence became oh so very unbearable. I could hear everything. I could hear the screams from all the people I've killed. I could hear Redgrave, and Ravenius and all the others. I could hear Chantho, and Lucy. I could hear my father, whispering his dying words to me. I could hear you." He gazed up at him tearfully, shaken to the core. "Every night I heard them scream." The light in his eyes dimmed. The Doctor looked at him, compassion and grief straining his face.

The ground suddenly shook beneath their feet, and a low rumble rose up from the walls. The Doctor swirled around and saw how the white-washed walls of the cell flickered as if caught in the blaze of lightning, and revealed the black void and the cold green lines of the computer matrix that lay at the heart of the simulation. The voice of the other Doctor came through, shrouded by static at first, but gaining in clearance and volume as it pressed on.

_"Doctor! We--- There are---I repeat, Doctor! You ne----get out! The others a---great danger! I can't help them! Doctor! Come back!"_

"You have to leave." The Master stated, keeping his voice firm.

"I can't." The Doctor replied, anxious. "I can't just leave you here."

The digital Doctor kept calling for the Doctor, pleading for his help.

"It's my mind. It's corrupting the Ark. My Doctor won't be able to keep your precious humans safe. You have to go."

"No." The Doctor shook his head stubbornly. "what ever you might think, you and I are destined to share a common future." His voice softened into a desperate plead. "Master, we're going to run through the universe, side by side. So I'm not leaving without you. Not again. " To the Doctor's relief, his words seemed to have a benevolent effect on the Master's grim state of mind.

"I won't be going anywhere." The Master replied with a small smile. "Not in this state." He turned his head to the door. "You can't just leave them. Get them on the ship and then come back. I'll try to stay lucid."

"But, what if –"

"You're right, there has to be a way." The Master interrupted before the Doctor could protest. "I can see it now." He rocked back and forth with renewed hope. "Oh I can see it now so clearly. Doctor, you are here. You're finally here. You came back just like she had shown me, and with that smart-sharp mind of yours, you'll find a way."

He gazed at him, focussing all of what was left of his reason to appear sane and hopeful. The Doctor, who needed the Master more than anything in the universe, was easily fooled.

"Exactly!" He sighed, reassured and happy. "I'll get you out. We'll get through this, together."

_"Doctor! Please! You ne---come back! I can't keep the fearwaves from penetrating their mind---long! You have to get them out of the tower! Doctor!"_

"I'll come back." The Doctor said determinedly, and dashed for the door.

_**TBC**_

One more chapter left to go my friends. Please review and comment if my story pleases you. Or visit to my author's profile for the updated **soundtrack for **_**His silent Mind**_.


	10. Chapter 10

**  
6.  
**

His eyes snapped open back into reality. He was sitting in the cage with the comatose Master still wrapped in his arms. Gently he lowered him on the grid.

Screams came from the other side of the chamber. Through the iron bars, he saw Neil and the others, being surrounded by a horde of giant centipedes, a group of flesh eating zombies, and an angry crowd of middle aged men waving dangerously with rolled up sheets of papers. He could only guess that the last and most unusual addition to the fearwaves came from Neil's phobia.

"Doctor! Help us! Please!" The young scientist yelled, when a prominent senior lecturer grabbed him by his arm and pulled him away from his other teammates. The digital Doctor tried to intervene, but the fear-wave creature passed right through him as if he was a ghost.

"Doctor!" Aurelia screamed, sinking through her knees. She faced a horrific arthropod that had raised itself up in air with its multiple pairs of teeth-like claws wriggling dangerously at her. "Do something! PLEASE!!!"

The Doctor jumped out of the cage and ran towards them while twisting and turning his sonic screwdriver to amplify the filter. Then he raised it and let the blue plasma light blast over the nightmare creatures, washing them out of his companions' minds.

"Doctor!" The digital Doctor swirled around. "You're back! I'm sorry. I know I've promised, but I couldn't. The fearwaves were becoming too strong, and there wasn't enough energy left to keep me in solid hologram form. Everything went into sustaining the asylum simulation. I couldn't offer them any help."

"What's happening here?" The Doctor breathed. His sonic screwdriver was still emitting the signal to protect them from the fearwaves, but its core was quickly getting overheated. "Why are the fearwaves gaining in strength?"

"I don't know, but it has something to do with the Master. I don't know what happened in the simulation, but these humans aren't safe. The Ark is rejecting their presence, and it wouldn't stop till all of them have cast themselves down the stairs and have been reduced to corpses."

"Then they have to get out." The Doctor said firmly, and grabbed hold of Neil and Aurelia, dragging them behind him. "Come on Will!" He slapped the dazed young man across the face. "WILL! Wakey wakey! No more zombies! Come on! I'm getting you out of here!"

Ushered by the Doctor, the group of young scientists quickly recovered from their fears, and followed him to the flight of stairs. The Doctor adjusted his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the invisible joint, making it appear again. The overloaded device gave off an angry spark and he grimaced when it burned his hand. Still he held on to it, realizing that it could give any minute, and that they had no time to spare.

"GO! Everyone of you! GO!"

The human companions jumped through the blue membrane of the portal. Before the Doctor followed, he turned to his digital clone. "I'll be right back as soon as these kids are on their way! In the meantime, PLEASE, don't let him do anything stupid!" He then turned and vanished into the blue waves.

**7.**

The ground and the walls of his white cell were trembling as if caught in an earthquake. The Master kept his head down in the shadows when the digital Doctor appeared.

"I did what you told me." The digital Doctor stated, his face grim with concern. "He's getting those humans out of the Ark."

"I heard you in the distress call. A job well done." The Master cheered joylessly.

"I don't understand this. Why do you want him to do this? Have you lost your mind completely? Is that it? Master, you can't let anyone leave the Ark. They are allowed to get in, but you can't let them get out, not without ripping a hole through the protection shield. Not without destabilizing the structure and endangering ourselves."

"Oh so you would care then?" The Master laughed, raising his head to him. "Fascinating, a program that is more afraid to die than his creator. I know I've not been that well, but that is one seriously fine piece of programming! I should congratulate myself."

"It's not that I care. I am not afraid, not for me. You made me that way. You made me resemble the Doctor." He studied with heavy hearts how the Master continued to giggle insanely, pretending not to be affected by this all. "You always do this, don't you? It doesn't matter if it's a simulation or reality, you'll always get yourself into trouble, sabotaging every chance on happiness, and ruining your life beyond saving, beyond redemption –"

"Stop it!" The Master snapped. The crazy smile had faded from his face. "Stop being like him!"

"I can't. As much as you can't stop feeling guilty about what you've done, or stop loathing the monster that you've become." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, and froze with his eyes wide with realization. "That's what this is all about, isn't it? The final act of punishment. You're going to send yourself to hell!"

"I said STOP IT!" The Master raged. Never had the truth been spoken. His creation's words cut right into his hearts.

"You lied to him. You told him that he could come back for you once the others were saved, because you knew you could always count on the Doctor's kindness, his empathy for the human race." The Doctor spun around, casting his angry, tear rimed eyes on the ceiling. "Oh my poor deranged Master! 2000 years of solitude, of suffering and madness and fear, waiting for this one moment, this one light in the darkness to arrive, and you would extinguish it just like that with a bitter lie, because you think you can no longer stand the light. Because you still think that you're not worth any mercy!"

The digital Doctor covered his tear-strained face with his hands. Then let out a frustrated cry. "You IDIOT! And I can't, I can't do anything about it! You won't let me! I have to sit here and watch you die!"

"I would still appreciate a little help." The Master spoke in a soft voice. "I need you to unlock the door for the Doctor."

The digital Doctor staggered back, shaking his head. "That would tear everything wide open. Master, please, you still have time to reconsider this! Don't do this!"

"You still work for me, don't you?" The Master pressed on, a mild irritation sounding through his voice.

"You are asking me to assist you in your suicide!"

"Not ask. Don't be ridiculous. I never ask." The Master looked his creation right into the eyes, and just for a moment, it was his old, confident self who was back in charge. "No my dear Doctor. I demand it. Now go. Go and obey your Master!"

**  
8.**

They ran down the stairs while the tower wall heaved and caved dangerously. It was if they were made of carton and rain had soaked into their cores, melting away the solidity of the structure. The steps of the stairs themselves became dangerous death traps, collapsing right under their feet. The Doctor shot an anxious glance back and saw that whole sections of the staircase behind them fell with a thunderous sound and disappeared into the abyss.

"Don't look back!" He just caught Aurelia as she was about to turn around to look at what had caused all that frightening noise. "Keep your eyes on the steps, and hurry up!"

They rushed down with the destruction hot on their heels. Finally they reached the end of the staircase, and the Doctor let go a sigh of relief when his feet touched the ground. Neil and the Doctor dashed towards the doors and pushed hard, but it would not yield. Will and Aurelia came over and they all tried together driving their shoulders against the wood.

"It's no use Doctor! It's locked!" Neil uttered. "We can't get out!"

"What do we do now?" Will asked. They all stared at the Doctor.

"It's because of that lock." The Doctor shot an anxious look at the clockwork embedded in the floor of the hall. His hand tightened around the sonic screwdriver. He couldn't use it to try to dismantle the complicated machine. One more task for the overloaded and overheated mechanical tool and it would break down completely, leaving them all exposed to the brainwaves.

"Doctor! Look!" Aurelia pointed. They all cast their eyes on the staircase where the digital Doctor appeared out of thin air. His partly translucent frame was projected in a faint blue glow and trembled in static as the tower inner structures crashed down around him.

"My dear Doctor." The digital Doctor said, and held up his version of the sonic screwdriver. "Let me give you a hand with that."

He threw the sonic in the air. As it flew in a wide arc through the sky, the translucent blue transformed into solid gold metal, before the Doctor caught it in mid air. The digital sonic had become a solid hologram with the same properties as the original. "Oh, that's very clever!" The Doctor smiled. "Actually I shouldn't say that, or you people will think I am dead-arrogant."

"Doctor!" Aurelia urged as large parts of the staircase came sailing down and plunged into the ground, only a few meters away from where they were standing.

"Right!" The Doctor jumped over the ruins to the middle of the hall where the clockwork was still ticking, but the two rusted handles were dead-bolted to their spot and were still pointing at 12 o'clock. He flicked on the second sonic and let the blue light beam cast down into the clockwork innards. Somewhere in the darkness beneath, sitting between the larger cog wheels that had stopped dead to gather dust, was the tiny lock that prevented the gears from turning. With one well-aimed blast with the sonic, he removed it from the mechanism, and with a loud grinding noise, the gears started to turn.

The door slowly opened, revealing the burnt orange light of dawn at the horizon. The Doctor lips turned into a cocky smile as confidence rushed through his body.

"Now, I want you to get on the raft as quickly as possible! I'm bringing you all back to the cruiser!"

The others didn't need to be told twice. They rushed out of the tower and jumped into the raft. The Doctor had just boarded the vessel when the lake suddenly started to tremble violently. It sent large waves of diamonds splashing against the sides and lifted the raft up in the air.

"Hang on!" The Doctor yelled. He started the motor and drove the small vessel away from the tower. His hearts froze when he saw that the doors of the entrance were closing, and the Ark itself started to sink away into the lake.

"Oh no! No! No! NO! NO!" The Doctor yelled, as he realized what was happening.

"Doctor!" Neil screamed. "The waves are getting higher! We'll turnover!"

The Doctor kept staring at the Ark as it disappeared underneath the waves.

"Doctor!" Aurelia leaned forward and yelled into his ear. "We have to go! We have to go NOW!"

The Doctor snapped back into action, and steered the vessel over the turbulent surface. "Oh no! NO! You're not doing this!" He yelled, as he rushed back to the silver shore. "I won't let you!"

"There is the beach!" Neil pulled on the Doctor's arm. "Doctor! We're almost at the shore! You have to pull back!"

The Doctor didn't answer, didn't even turn to look at him. It was as if Neil and the others had vanished, had become insignificant to him. All he wanted was to get these humans back on the ship and return to the Ark before it was too late. His right hand tightened on the steer while his left swept down and clutched the gear with a white-knuckled grip.

"Hang on!" He yelled and pushed the gear all the way down, sending the graft flying over the foam of the shoreline and right onto land.

**  
9.**

The simulation was failing. His surroundings flashed from the bleak void back to the white chamber so fast and so often that it hurt his eyes to just look at it. The digital Doctor was there, still by his side, loyal to him till the very end.

"They're gone, the Doctor and the others, they've left the Ark." The Doctor informed his master.

The Master stared at the ceiling. "Good." He whispered. His voice was lost in the loud destruction of the tower that echoed into the simulation. "It won't be long now."

"You have to stop. What you're doing is madness." The digital Doctor tried. "The Doctor knows. He won't leave with the others. Even if the tower is sinking all the way down to the bottom of the lake, he would come back and try to dig you out. He would try dying! You're stubbornness is only going to ensure his downfall!"

"I won't take that idiot with me into the grave." The Master reassured his creation in a hoarse voice. "You have to lock him inside the cruiser once he's onboard. Knowing these humans, they will take care of the rest."

The digital Doctor didn't move a muscle.

"Do it!" The Master sneered.

**  
10.**

"There you go!" The Doctor hastily whizzed his sonic over the dashboard. They had arrived safely at the landing site of the cruiser, and had already boarded the ship. The others were standing around him in the cockpit in a semi-circle. Neil had strapped himself down in the pilot seat and was ready to go.

"I've upgraded the autopilot, polished the planet navigation system, and boosted up your engines, just in case. You will be able to get the hell off this planet without me." The Doctor swirled around and pushed towards the back.

"Wait! You can't go back there! The whole place is going to hell!" Aurelia snapped.

"Doctor, she's right. The tower must have already disappeared underneath the surface by now, and the lake is highly unstable." Neil urged.

"I don't care. I have to go back!" The Doctor was almost at the cabindoor when it suddenly closed. The lights went on inside the cabin and the cockpit warninglights flashed from red to green.

The Doctor tried the handle, when it didn't turn he put his shoulder against the door and pushed. "Neil! Why did you do this? Open the door!"

"I didn't-"

"Open it NOW!"

Neils fingers flew over the dashboard, trying every button that could unlock it, but none of them worked.

"It wasn't me! I didn't close it!"

The Doctor rushed back into the cockpit, just when the cruiser's dual engines burst into life.

"I didn't do anything! I swear!" Neil said with his hands away from the steering wheel. The Doctor stared nervously out of the cockpit window. The glittering surface of the diamond lake had vanished, and the shifting dunes in front of them were collapsing, sinking away into a massive, gaping hole in the planet's surface where once the Ark had stood.

The Master.

The Master said he knew he was going to come back for him.

He said that he had a smart-sharp mind. He gave him a complement.

The Master gave the Doctor a complement.

When in the name of stone-cold logic, did that ever happen?

"Oh IDIOT that I've been!" The Doctor sneered, realizing that the Master had tricked him. "The Master lied to me! That poor deranged sod, he lied to me!"

A siren inside the cockpit went off and the Doctor and the others were swept back ferociously when the cruiser launched itself into the sky.

"Oh no, you don't!" The Doctor struggled back up. Fighting against the gravity, he pulled himself forward on the legs of the seats.

Neil was still sitting in the pilot seat and had grabbed onto the steering wheel with a white knuckled grip. However, the cruiser seemed to have a will own its own.

"Turn back!" The Doctor yelled above the roar of the engines. They were high up in the air, reaching the planet's stratosphere with the black void of space beckoning at them through the thinning clouds. "I have to go back!"

"There is no control! I can't steer the ship!" Neil responded desperately, just when the Cruiser coursed through the last crimson clouds and into outer space. Neil saw from his side window how the red-sky planet started to spin faster and faster, being swept up by the roaring heart of the black hole.

"Doctor!" He yelled in fear and stunned amazement. "The planet! It's disappearing! It's falling into the black hole!"

The Doctor stared at the fast turning orb, his hearts paralyzed by fear. He aimed the sonic screwdriver over the controls. The control screen of the cockpit flashed from blue into black, and green letters started to scroll over the display.

REQUEST MANUAL STEERING REJECTED

MASTER OVERRIDES

Followed by:

MASTER OVERRIDES

MASTER OVERRIDES

MASTER OVERRIDES

On and on it went, sending the Doctor clutching on to his hair in despair.

"You can't do this!" He muttered, his voice rising with his anger and desperation. "Master, you can't, you can't DO THIS!"

The message on the screen flashed awkwardly. The Ark must have a limited range. Quickly, the Doctor aimed the sonic back on the controls, and the black screen vanished to be replaced with the original blue. He slapped at the side of the console and the manual steering came back on. Neil stared worriedly at the Timelord.

"I'm not going back Doctor. That planet is doomed."

"Get out of that seat!"

"You can't do this. We'll be dead even before we could land on the surface!"

"I'm going back. What ever it takes, I'm going back to get him."

"Doctor, you're the cleverest man I've ever met, but this is madness." Neil urged, trying to talk some sense into him. "You can't save him. It's too late. Doctor it's too late."

The Doctor shook his head stubbornly and was about to pull Neil away from behind the steering wheel when a hard blow hit him on the back of his head. He swirled around and saw a frightened Aurelia standing behind him, holding a busted camera in her hands. He swirled back towards the cockpit, his legs turning into soft stone.

Before he reached Neil, his world turned black.

**  
11.**

"Their ship is finally leaving the solar system." The digital Doctor continued to report. They were still together, inside the tiny cell with the white walls. It was all that was left of the simulation. All that the program could still sustain while the core systems were shutting down one by one. Outside these walls, there was nothing but a cold black void, the remnants of the Master's broken mind.

"And he can't come back?" The Master asked.

"One of the humans knocked him out. He won't be able to interfere."

A small smile of relief played on the Master's lips. "He will be alright. He may be hurt, and his pride may be dented, but he will survive. He always does."

"What about you? What is to become of you?"

A long and burdened silence followed as the old fear of death clutched onto the Master's hearts.

"If you don't want to die, then why did you do this?" The digital Doctor dared to ask. He was brought to the brink of desperation by the Master's mad stubbornness.

"He can't save me. Don't you think I've tried to get out? Before I've created you as my guardian, I've tried about everything. There is no way, no way I could think of to leave this planet and escape death."

"But why didn't you let the Doctor try to save you? What's so horrible about giving yourself a chance to leave this awful place and trading it for a bit of star-light on your wretched face? Master, why didn't you even try?"

For a moment, it seemed that the Master was going to serve him another one of his snide remarks, but instead, he turned away from him.

"It's too late." The Master mumbled, shielding his head with his hands. "It's all too late. Nothing left but yesterday's regrets."

The digital Doctor stared ahead, forcing back his tears. "Do you want me to run another simulation for you?" He finally asked. It was all that he could still do for him. "There is not much energy left, and most of the systems are down, but perhaps I could still run something small, to keep your mind away from all this. Something you want to remember, or a place that you might want to visit for the last time."

The Master shook his head. "No. No it's alright." He gazed up at the digital Doctor, his eyes shone with fear and regret. "For the last 2000 years I've been dreaming, caught in an endless night of illusions to keep myself from screaming. For once I want to be brave and to stay lucid. When the end comes, I would like to know that it really is the end."

"Master. Please let me help. For old time's sake."

The Master stared silently at the digital Doctor whose grief and empathy was mirroring that of the real Doctor high up in the sky.

"Help me by shutting it down. Please. This travesty of a life. Let it finally cease. Shut it all down for me."

A tear glided down the digital Doctor's face as he followed the Master's orders. The white washed cell crumbled down, revealing the dark void of emptiness that lay beneath the thin layer of deception. Finally, even the Doctor's frame started to fade.

"Farewell my Master. It's been my honour to serve you."

The Master stared at the blue vanishing light, and smiled bitterly while his hearts filled with sorrow and dread. "Goodbye my Doctor, and thank you."

The Doctor dissolved into the darkness that surrounded the Master. He was no more.

**  
12.**

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes again was the fasten-seatbelt light flashing frantically in the trembling overhead locker. Then he remembered. The Master.

He struggled to get up but found himself strapped down in the passenger seat.

"Get these seatbelts off! I want to get out of this chair, right now!" He snapped, and turned his head to the side.

"Oh no! We're not going to do that!" Aurelia said, who was strapped down in her own seat next to him, and was holding on the armrests firmly while the cruiser shook form side to side. "I'm sorry Doctor, but you're not taking us back!"

"The Master! I've to get to him! He's still down there!"

"Don't you hear me? We don't want to die because of him! We don't even know him! How could you expect us to risk our lives so that your conscience could be cleared? How can you be so selfish?!"

The Doctor pressed his lips together and looked out of the window. There, lying already a good distance behind them was what was left of Gallifrey. The massive globe was quickly spiralling towards the centre of the black hole. The red clouds had vanished. It had evaporated with the intense heat that was released with its eminent destruction, leaving the black hostile surface visible to the naked eye. One third of the planet had already gone. The rest of the orb glowed dimly in the vortex, the surface of the planet cracked open like a giant egg, showing the burning lava stream oozing up from underneath.

Aurelia was right. The planet was lost.

And the Master, he was lost with it.

The Doctor slumped back into his chair. Defeated and all of his hope vanishing with the disappearing planet, his eyes quickly welled with tears.

"I'm sorry." Aurelia said softly. "I didn't mean to."

He was brought back from his sorrow when a massive turbulence hit the ship, violently shaking them out of their seats. The doctor's seatbelts snapped, sending him flying through the cabin. He knocked his head against the overhead locker, and for a short moment, his vision blurred.

"Doctor!" Neil yelled from out of the cockpit. The Doctor found himself lying on the floor in the aisle between the 2 rows of seats. He lifted himself up and pushed forward to the cabin.

"Doctor!" Neil glanced over his shoulder, but kept his hands steady on the wheel that shook like mad. "I'm sorry, but we had to restrain you-"

"What's happening?" The Doctor gazed through the cockpit window. Bright rings of blue and green plasma light appeared at the dark horizon and rushed towards them in waves. Another one hit the cruiser and shook the vessel like it was a metal tin cane being kicked around by a group of over-enthusiastic schoolboys. The Doctor held on to the back of Neil's seat for dear life.

"What's are these Doctor?" Neil asked fearfully, while struggling to maintain control over the vessel.

"Forcefields!" The Doctor yelled as the turbulence brought the struggling engines to an ear-shattering roar. "Huge, powerful barriers of negatively charged energy that were set up to keep trespassers at bay from the doomed planet. Now that the planet is destroyed, they are shutting down and collapsing into themselves!" The Doctor's eyes suddenly grew wide in realisation. Before Neil could ask him another question, he turned on his heels and quickly headed back to the cabin.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Aurelia asked, frightened when saw the Timelord take out his sonicscrewdriver. "No! You can't take us back! We'll die there, you selfish idiot!"

"Doctor, I can't let you." Will struggled with his seatbelt, eager to stop him.

"Stand back, both of you!" The Doctor held up the sonic and activated it. "I don't want any of you ending up inside!"

"Ending up where?" Will asked, finally able to free himself out of his seat he stood between the Doctor and Aurelia, only to be knocked down again when the third wave of turbulence sent him reeling backwards into the aisle.

"I don't want you to end up inside the Tardis." The Doctor said, and let the blue box materialize around him. He was inside the console room, standing near the Tardis door, and heard Will and Aurelia shouting his name at the other side.

He swung the door open. "It's all right! I'm going to leave in my own spaceship." He said, and smiled cheekily at Aurelia while bouncing impatiently on his toes. "By the way, this is my spaceship, it's called the Tardis. Well it's actually more than a spaceship, but I don't want to brag. Don't have to time. I couldn't get to the planet in it before because of the barrier fields. They had locked it for Timelord technology, but now that they are removed, I can hop back to Galligrey in a jiff!" He beamed, exhilarated.

His human companions were a bit slow. "H-how d-did this wooden box get in here?" Will stuttered.

"Oh never mind that." The Doctor said. "You guys get yourself to safety. Get your asses back to the university, and start writing all those important papers you were whining about." He turned and was about the slam the door shut. "Oh and tell Neil to stay away from black holes and mysterious planets from now on! Even the great Charles Darwin took only one voyage to get inspired for his masterpiece, if he can do it, so can Neil Armstrong. Seriously, you're not the field type of scientists."

He went back inside and locked the door. Within seconds, the Tardis core started to churn and whizz, and the blue box disappeared right in front of the astonished faces of the two young scientists.

**13.**

The darkness was closing in on him. He sat in the void, lost, alone, and frightened.

He was oh so very frightened.

The world outside was coming to an end. The monster in the cage locked up in the highest chamber of the tower would soon die, its corporal vessel smashed into atoms by the violent forces of the black hole. They would be dispatched as a cloud of dust and be sucked into the deep black pit, falling away forever without ever touching the ground.

He hugged himself tightly and closed his eyes. Softly he sung to himself, his inner voice broken and trembling.

"Hush child, the darkness will rise from the deep, and carry your soul down into sleep."

Slowly, he rocked back and forth, back and forth, as he tried to lull his mind into eternal slumber.

**14.**

"What's happening? Doctor? Will? Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Frustrated, Neil shouted from the cockpit all the way back into the cabin.

Will and Aurelia both returned to the front of the ship to face a very puzzled pilot.

"Where is the Doctor? I heard a strange sound coming from the back. Some kind of horn or something. What was that all about?"

"You tell him." Aurelia bumped Will's shoulder.

"Me? But I don't even have a clue of what just happened!" Neil muttered.

As it was in her habit to do so, Aurelia rolled her eyes. She was about to try to explain what they had witnessed when the control screen flashed again to reveal a rhinoceros clad in full battle gear.

"Oh what the hell is happening now!" Neil exclaimed, almost irritated.

"That's a Judoon soldier!" Will breathed in shock.

"What does he want?" Aurelia asked.

The image of the Judoon steadied through the static. The soldier opened and closed his mouth, as if he was speaking.

"Quickly, put on the sound! Underneath the dashboard, at your right!" Neil pointed. "And don't forget to switch on the translator!"

Will turned on the volume, and the harsh voice of the Judoon soldier rang through the speakers.

"_Bo kro no do zo so vo- entering the forbidden zone. I repeat, one of your spacepods is entering the forbidden zone. Call it back at once!" _

"Spacepods? We don't have any spacepods onboard! What's he rambling about?" Neil asked, and shot a glance at the others.

"I think he meant the Doctor." Aurelia said. She quickly decided to elaborate on that when she saw the confused frown on Neil's face. "He just left in his blue bo- in his spaceship."

"_I repeat. Call back your spacepod__ back at once!"_

"Spaceship? Where the hell did he get a spaceship from?" Neil swirled around and pushed the reply button. "We didn't send out the spacepod! We cannot call it back!"

"Call it back immediately, or we will blast your ship out of the sky!"

Shocked by the Judoon soldier's threat, Aurelia pushed down the reply button.

"Didn't you hear what he said? We didn't send out the blue box! It's the Doctor! He's going back to the planet on his own initiative!"

If it was possible for an alien with rhinoceroslike features to frown, the Judoon soldier was definitely doing it right now. _"The Doctor?"_ He replied with a slowness that bordered on mental retardation.

"Yes! The Doctor!" Aurelia snapped. "That crazy what-lord who came here to free the nightmare child. THAT Doctor!"

"_You were with the Doctor?"_

"Yes! Yes we were. And where were you by the way the first time we went to that cursed planet? We're already on our way back, you moron! We almost got killed! Protective outer space police monitoring, my arse!"

Neil pushed her away from the transmission station.

"I'm terribly sorry, she didn't mean that!"

The image of the Judoon soldier disappeared, and was replaced by that of a human, a man in his early forties, dressed in a grey suit of fine and expensive taste. His hair was combed back to reveal a widows peak. The greasy smile on his face carried from side to side, but lacked geniality, sincerity, or even the faintest touch of humanity.

"_I must apologise for mister Baines__' rude behaviour. He is not used to speak to beings with a fully developed frontal lobe like your gracious selves."_

The man in the grey suit beamed another sterile smile into the screen.

"_Now, this situation__ seems to be getting rather out of hand. It's better that someone with a higher authority and with more cortex capacity takes over and handles this crisis."_

"Who are you? What do you want from us?" Neil enquired.

"_My name is mister Foks. That's Foks with a K and a S. I'm speaking to you on behalf of my client the Shadow Proclamation. Your friend the Doctor has entered th__e forbidden zone without my client's consent. According to the strictures set out by the Shadow Proclamation, mister Baines here has now every right to seize your transport and technology, or like he prefers it, shoot your vehicle right out of the sky."_

"We didn't know." Neil glanced nervously at Aurelia. "He left on his own. I think he went back to save his friend."

"_Oh yes. This nightmare child that your lovely__ co-passenger informed us about. Tell me mister –excuse me, it is mister Kadish, isn't it?"_ Mister Foks stared into the transmission screen with suspicion.

"Uhm, yes, yes mister Foks?" Neil sweated. Suddenly he feared that this was going to end badly. The man's eyes, they seemed to look right into his soul.

"_Now tell me, mister Kadish." _He spoke out the name with a peculiar slowness as if he tasted the lie between his lips._ "- did the Doctor by any chance mention the name of his friend to you?"_

**  
15.**

This was it. This was the end.

He felt the sharp hot sting of agony course through his corporal vessel. He feared it would be the first of many.

Frightened out of his mind, he kept his eyes shut, and tried to stop sensing anything what was happening to that monster in the tower. He forced himself to focus all of what remained of his fractured mind onto the words that he whispered in the dark.

"The darkness will rise from the deep. It will carry your soul down into sleep. The darkness will rise from the deep, and carry your soul down into sleep."

The void started to shake as it was torn apart. His mind began to feel dazed as more and more flashes of violent pain ripped through his body.

"Hush child. The darkness will rise from the deep, and carry your soul down into sleep."

He became aware of a light that grew in the periphery of his vision, followed by a harsh wind and the familiar sound of a whizzing engine. He fluttered his eyes against the swirling air and saw that the light was quickly gaining in brightness, till it became as blinding and radiant as the sun, and cast away the frightening darkness that had surrounded him. In the middle of that light stood the Doctor's Tardis.

The door swept open and a tall, shadowy figure dashed towards him.

The void was collapsing into itself. His body broken, his mind was swiftly extinguishing like a candle in the wind.

The last thing that the Master saw, the last image that was imprinted into his dying brain, was the sight of the Doctor, sweeping him up from the ground and carrying him away from the darkness.

Hush child.

Mercy will arrive from above.

And carry you back into the light.

**16.**

The water was tranquil today. He saw it through the large window of his bedroom that flooded with the warm light of the orange burnt sky. At the horizon lay the silver shoreline, behind that were the windswept hills of mount Perdition, glowing red as the beams of the late afternoon suns brushed over the flowing sea of red grass.

He came off his bed and stepped with his bare feet on the vinyl. It felt cool to the touch. Hesitantly, he came closer to the window, digging through his mind while he kept his eyes fixed on the scenery outside. He frowned. There was something not quite right.

"Do you remember something?"

The Master turned around. The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on his bed and beamed a reassuring smile at him.

"Are you sure about this?"

"About what?"

"The sky, it's orange. I thought it used to be red."

The Doctor jumped up from the bed and came to stand by his side at the window. "Nah, your mind is all jumbled up. It was orange, I am one hundred percent absolutely sure about it."

The Master cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Well, maybe it was tad darker. Persimmon would be a good guess, with a bit of tangerine." The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck.

"I like red. I prefer red. A touch of burgundy would be nice."

"Let's keep things authentic shall we. You don't want it to turn out like the last time."

"Last time?" The Master looked at the Doctor with a puzzled look on his face.

"Ah, you may not remember that. Which is good." The Doctor nodded, gently guiding him back to the bedside. "You don't need to remember everything at once. Wouldn't be wise."

"Doctor." The Master looked up at him as he let him sit down again on the bed. "Why am I locked up in here?"

A shadow of anguish flashed over the Doctor's face. He quickly composed himself. "You're not well. I want to take good care of you and make sure that you're safe. That's why you're here. Don't get confused now. This isn't a prison. You're not a prisoner, and I am not your jailor. I am your guardian, and you are my ward."

The Master nodded slowly. It was stupid of him to forget about it again. The Doctor had told him so many times, but his mind seemed to slip constantly, never being able to hold on to a single thought. "Am I going to get better again?" He felt embarrassed for he was sure he had also questioned the Doctor about this before, but he couldn't remember what he had told him, and he really needed to know. He was worried.

"Sure you are! Don't be daft." The Doctor smiled hopefully. "Of course you'll get better, and then I will to take you out of here in a heartbeat. That's a promise."

The Master nodded again and gazed through the large window where outside, the twin suns were starting to set over the hills. The old familiar sense of dread conditioned into him after facing two thousand years of sunset by his own, rose up from the pit of his belly.

"It will be dark soon." He whispered, his eyes large with fright, but holding himself together to not let the Doctor see his fear.

"I'll stay here with you." The Doctor said, giving him no need to go ask for his help. He knew the Master like the back of his hand.

"You'll stay?"

"Yup, just like last night. And the night before." The Doctor said. Actually, he had spent all the nights in here with the Master ever since he had rescued him from the tower. Every night he had stayed with him, making sure that his troubled mind would find peace, and keeping his nightmares at bay. It was only that the Master couldn't remember any of his efforts.

"But, don't you need to leave? Go somewhere? Save a planet, go and visit one of your human companions?"

The Doctor shook his head determinedly. "I'll stay here with you as long as you need me. As long as it takes for you to get better."

"And what if it takes years?" The Master snorted.

"I'll stay."

Decades?"

"I'll stay right here by your side."

"A hundred years?"

"I'll pop out and rent some DVDs, get a couple of books out of the library. Perhaps take up a hobby. Origami seems interesting. We'll manage."

The Master sighed and rolled his eyes, exhausted by the Doctor's persistence. "What if I'll never get sane again?"

"I didn't expect you to get sane." The Doctor smiled cheekily. "Now you wouldn't be you, you wouldn't be _my _Master if you weren't a bit of an eccentric sociopath, would you? Now as long as you don't kill, main or hurt anyone, I'm fine with a tad of insanity."

The Master, finally lost for words, just shook his head and smiled back at the Doctor.

They remained silent for a while. The two last Timelords in existence, two childhood friends, sitting on the bed side by side as they watched how the twin suns both travelled the final part of the day's journey over the sky. Outside of the simulation, the Doctor's Tardis continued to circle around the black hole that had devoured the black planet with the red sky. It was suspended in time. Inside, the Master was still unconscious, strapped down on a cot. The Doctor was by his side, and held his head gently against his own, determined to let his sound and rational mind heal that what was broken. Lost in his quest, all of the time in the universe could pass, all the planets could be grinded into dust, and all the stars in the sky could extinguish one by one, but it would hold no meaning to him. Nothing in the whole wide universe would ever mean anything to him again if he couldn't keep himself to that one single promise.

_Hang on in there, Master__. I'll get you out. I'll take you to the stars. You watch us run Timelord. All the way through the dangers and wonders of the galaxy. _

_You watch us run._

"Oh Doctor." The Master laughed, as if he could suddenly read the Doctor's mind again. "You are one arrogant, sanctimonious, and overly sentimental bastard, you know that?"

Outside of the bedroom, the twin suns were setting over Gallifrey.

_  
The End._

That was it people. Thank you all for reviewing and for reading my psychobabble! **For those who wanted a hard copy of the story, you can go to my author's profile or to find out more.** I have also added the last two tracks and the rest of the soundtrack can also be found on my author's profile page. I've started on a new story and will post the first chapter up in two weeks time, so **expect the Doctor and the Master to be back in "Judoon Justice"**, hopefully the first in a series that is heavily focussed on a Timelord and his madman, travelling together through time and space. Last but not least, please let me know what you thought of "His Silent Mind", your reviews are absolutely motivating!


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